Webinar: The Kurdish Question in Iran After Amini’s Murder September 29, 2022
As of today, 76 people have been reported killed by the Norway-based Iran Human Rights Organization. It is an imperative dimension that the official number is 41. It’s still a significant number in accordance with the Iranian government sources.
The protest movement in Iran started 14 days ago, on September 16, after a Kurdish woman Jina Mahsa Amini died in the custody of the Iranian morality police. She has been the center of the protest movement ever since it started. Interestingly, the protest turned into a unifying factor for entire Iran, and not only the Kurds, which is an interesting point that we will be discussing today. The majority of these protests have been in Iranian Kurdistan, namely the Kurdish-inhabited region where according to Kurdish sources, the number of people who have been killed, wounded, or detained has reportedly been much larger than the rest of Iran. The protest movement of 2022 differs from previous protest movements in Iran in several aspects. The first is, this is one of the largest that Iran has seen, perhaps the largest since 2009. But the biggest difference is that the protest movement of today has no unified or centralized leadership, or doesn’t have any leader symbols or previous movements in Iran ever since the revolution took place in 1979.
That said, another distinct future of the process movement this year is the diversified issues that the protest movement is touching upon women and Iran’s regime control over women. Body appearance is one of the central themes of these protests, but we have recently been hearing from Iranian groups that it’s beyond not only about how women are treated by the Iranian regime, especially the Kurdish exiled groups, which have been participating in global action calling for justice for Kurdish women. I’d like to mention the most interesting point is that a traditionally Kurdish motto or slogan, “women, life, freedom,” has been translated into Farsi and is now being used by protesting masses across the country and beyond. I believe an important point that has to be discussed is to understand how the relations between the Kurdish community and the non-Kurdish community of Iran are changing in light of these protests.
Finally, a widespread cross-border bombardment of Kurdish positions in the Iraqi Stan region happened yesterday, marking an interesting and unprecedented milestone in Iran’s cross-border operations against the Kurdish groups in Iraq. The number of attacks that have happened over the past few days exceeds far beyond the previous Iranian cross-border operations.