Monday, January 5, 2009

Ez kurd im!



Protest



To the United Nations general secretariat

To those who have the power of attorney to internationally issue documents concerning human rights and to those who have the mandate/power over international and political issues.

Chapter 2 in the UN charter states that people should be able to control their own future. In chapter 3 you can read that human rights and fundamental freedom in spite of race, sex, language and religion should be respected.

In 1639 the signing of a treaty known as “Kasr- I shirin” by the Ottoman and the Persian Empires divided the province known as Kurdistan.

After WW I the Ottoman Empire was dissolved and new borders were drawn on the 24th of July 1923. A meeting in Lausanne between representatives of the Turkish republic and its WWI-allies split the part of Kurdistan that lay in the Ottoman Empire into three new parts. Today Kurdistan is divided into four parts in Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria.

35-40 million Kurds live in the Middle East and their will to be recognised as a people and to establish a Kurdish state is not even acknowledged. The Kurdish people’s existence and their culture are excluded from Turkish, Arabic and Iranian laws and constitutions. The Kurdish people are not even accepted as a minority population and Kurdistan is not even considered to be a province. The country that we the Kurds have lived in for thousands of years is seen upon as a country ruled by Turks, Arabs and Persians. In other words we don’t exist on this planet. We lack status, and our own language, culture and traditions are forbidden, rejected and ignored.

The four states that occupy Kurdistan have the following objectives: to assimilate and deny the existence of the Kurds, to annihilate those who are against their cruelty and their barbaric repercussions. Their objective is to destroy, our history, our culture and our way of life. Our history is filled with demonstrations and rebellions against the violence handed out by these cruel states, violence that we have been exposed to for many centuries. Our struggle for freedom and justice still prevails today in our divided and troubled Kurdistan.

Why don’t we have the right to an independent and free country when all the other people on earth have that right? Today there are a number of countries containing minority groups and these groups are slowly gaining their freedom and independence. One example is Kosovo, a land that in February 2008 gained the right to break finally away from Serbia and become an independent country. We want that same right, the same right that will give us freedom and independence. We want to decide over our own fate and destiny. It is not the Turkish, the Persian or the Arabic countries that created us. We have existed as Kurds in Kurdistan since time and memorial. We are not immigrants.

Every day we risk torture, imprisonment and our lives for expressing our identity and just uttering the concept of “Kurdistan” is enough to be classified as a terrorist and punished thereafter. As Kurds we want justice and our human freedom and rights secured. We want our coming generations to be able to speak their own language and to know their own culture. We want to live without the fears that threaten our very existence. Germany apologized for the holocaust during WWII. Australia apologized to the Aborigines. We on the other hand are still murdered in our own country. No one apologizes for the murder of Kurds.

To the powers that deny us our freedom and rights we want to deliver the message that we will never stop campaigning for a free Kurdistan.

To all the countries and institutions that have the power to make this change we lay our fate and faith in your hands. The world order that applies to all other nations should also be applied to Kurds. Therefore we ask of you to help us create a sovereign state called Kurdistan and help us be recognised as a people and a nation.

We demand our human rights as a people and as a nation and we demand the return of our country.



1 comment:

KULKA said...

i sigmed this petition, like i always do with any petition for kurdistan and i leave the link for my friends on Roj Bash Kurdistan - our forum.