Washington Kurdish Institute
September 10, 2018
On September 8, 2018, the tyrannical, mullah-run Iranian regime, specifically its terrorism-sponsoring Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC), bombarded the headquarters of two Iranian-Kurdish opposition political parties in Iraqi Kurdistan. The two parties, the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran (KDP-I) and one of its splinter groups, were holding a meeting between senior leadership in the town of Koya, in the heart of the Kurdistan region, when the missile attacks occurred. As a result of these strikes, 17 individuals, both party leadership and general members, were killed. In addition, 50 people, including children and elderly people, were injured. As the world stood silent after these barbaric attacks, the IRGC released a statement and videos confirming its responsibility for the “surface-to-surface” missile strikes against the Kurdish political parties.
These attacks were a blatant violation of state sovereignty and implicate an indirect but serious threat to the international community, especially the United States (with Iran having demonstrated ability to attack Americans in Iraq between 2003-2011), and its purported norms of international conduct.
Yet this terroristic bombing was not enough for Iran’s Islamic extremist regime; for, just hours before, three Kurdish men were executed for their political activism. One of the activists, Ramin Panahi, had his case recognized internationally by organizations like Amnesty International and other human rights organizations, who repeatedly called on the Iranian regime to halt the execution. Prior to their executions, the Iranian regime engaged in years of physical, mental, and emotional abuse against Panahi and his cousins, repeatedly taking them to execution rooms only to later return them back to their prison cells.
Clearly, the Iranian government purposefully synchronized these executions with its bombardment of the Kurdish political parties meeting in Iraq. The regime wanted to send a message to the Kurds, both in Iran and in neighboring countries.
Yet in these past 24 hours, it was not just the Iranian theocracy that brutally targeted the Kurdish people. On the same day in Syria, the Assad regime’s security forces attacked Kurdish families in Qamishlo. The attacks arose after Kurdish security forces, Asayesh, intervened against Assadist gangs attempting to unlawfully and unjustifiably stop and arrest civilians in the city. In response, these Assadist elements opened fire and killed seven Asayesh. Before the Syrian Civil War, the government of Assad legally deprived its country’s Kurds of the most basic rights of citizenship. Once the civil war broke out, the Kurdish people of Syria were able to establish territorial control and some form of self-rule in 2012. But now this independent political entity stands in jeopardy. As the Assad regime grows more powerful, having defeated most of its opposition forces, it now turns its bloodthirsty eyes to Kurds — realizing that the international community will most likely remain silent to any brutality or inhumane acts that the regime may perpetrate.
In addition to the Iranian and Syrian regime attacks on the Kurds, again on this same day, the government of Turkey imposed harsh sentences against the country’s most prominent Kurdish leader — Selahattin Demirtas. Demirtas is the former Co-Chair of the People’s Democratic Party (HDP) and was jailed by Turkey’s authoritarian President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in November 2016. Demirtas was officially charged for “making propaganda for a terrorist organization,” a charge that is often used to jail Turkish citizens who criticize Erdogan and his regime. So far tens of thousands of people remain jailed under this expansive, questionable charge. Demirtas received a punishment of four years and eight months in prison, alongside his colleague Sirrı Süreyya Onder, a lawmaker who received a prison sentence of three years and six months. Although Onder himself is not Kurdish he committed the unforgivable sin, in the eyes of Erdogan and his followers, of defending Turkey’s Kurdish minority against governmental persecution that has occurred for over a century.
And so, it was within 24 hours that Kurds in Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey all suffered what they’ve been suffering for over a century and on a daily basis — unjustified violent attacks and persecution. They suffered and continue to suffer this inhumanity for a simple reason: they dare to demand their basic human rights against brutal, tyrannical regimes.