Loghman H. Ahmedi

The Middle East Institute will host Carol Prunhuber, my colleague Sharif Behruz who works as the PDKI’s U.S. representative and my brother Idris Ahmedi for a lecture about the political, social and human rights status of Iran’s Kurds

Read more on the MEI’s website – Prunhuber will speak about Kurd leader Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou whose untimely assassination by the Iranian regime twenty years ago robbed the Kurdish nation of one of its most prominent and forward-thinking leaders. Her recently published book The Passion and Death of Rahman the Kurd: Dreaming Kurdistan (iUniverse, 2010) situates the life and political struggle of Ghassemlou in the wider Iranian political context. Sharif Behruz will address the impact of Iran’s Green Movement on minority groups like the Kurds and the need for Iran’s opposition to be more inclusive in order to gain significant political ground. Idris Ahmedi will discuss contending perspectives on the future of Iran with respect to its ethnic diversity. Is diversity a threat to Iran’s territorial integrity, or a facilitator to the rise of meaningful democracy?

Jamshid to the left and Chia to the right

Unfortunately two of our Peshmergas, Sadiq Raofi (known by his nickname Chia) and Jamshid Nasri, lost their lives in a car accident when they were driving back to one of our bases in Iraqi Kurdistan.

Chia (which means mountain) was a dear friend to all of us that knew him; he worked in our party’s secretariat and was always ready to fulfil any duties that bestowed upon him.

Both Chia and Jamshid served the Kurdish nation to the best of their abilities and they will be missed by all of us. Our party sends our deepest condolences to both of these two brave men’s families, friends and fellow Peshmergas.

Today a funeral ceremony, which was attended by our party leader Mustafa Hijri, was held in one of our bases in honour of Chia and Jamshids lives and their sacrifices.

The Islamic Republic of Iran falsely claims that its security forces have arrested three members of our party, the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan, in the Kurdish cities of Sardasht and (Xane) Piranshar.

Our party has made it clear in a statement yesterday that none of our members have been arrested in Sardasht or Piranshar.

Our party has no information about the individuals that the Islamic Republic claims to have arrested, but note that the Islamic Republic wants to have a pretext to crack down on political activists in Kurdistan that are peacefully working for Kurdish rights, and by accusing individuals of membership in our party the regime gives itself the “legitimacy” to execute, torture and imprison peaceful activists.

Since Ayatollah Khomein declared holy war against the Kurdish people in 1979 and labelled our party as the party of Satan, arbitrary arrests, killings and executions have been part of peaceful political activists lives.

I thought that I would share some of the pictures from the 7th Session of the United Nations Universal Periodic Review:

After listening to Hillary Clinton talking about how Iran’s Revolutionary Guard is “supplanting” the government of Iran one really becomes bewildered by the United States Iran-policy.

Apparently, the US believes that the supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, and Mahmoud Ahmedinejad are powerless figures, who are being controlled by the Revolutionary Guard. It seems that the fact that both Ahmedinejad and Khamenei have roots in the Revolutionary Guard – and that one of the main reasons behind the ever-increasing power of the Revolutionary Guard is the support that Khamenei bestows upon the organization – has eluded the Obama administration. This is somewhat disturbing, most of us presumed that a state that has been in a constant conflict with Iran during the last 31-years should know more about the power structure of its enemy.

But what is more disturbing is that the US apparently believes that Khamenei and Ahmedinejad are the legitimate rulers of Iran, but they have the unfortunate luck of being “supplanted” by the Revolutionary Guard.

Read: In August 1979, seven months after the ouster of the shah, the euphoria of revolution had given way to the realities of Islamic fundamentalism — black chadors, broken wine bottles, censorship, public executions. Protests in Tehran were drawing enormous crowds, while in Kurdistan, separatists were demanding an independent Kurdish state. On Aug. 16, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini dispatched Iranian troops to put down the movement.

The troops had been killing Kurds for 11 days when, on Aug. 27, 11 more “counterrevolutionaries” were sentenced to die in Sanandaj.

Among the condemned were Ahsan and Shahriar Nahid. Ahsan, an engineer in Tehran, had joined a Kurdish separatist organization after the revolution and moved to Sanandaj. Shahriar, a medical student, had been visiting his brother when the two were arrested at a military checkpoint.

Yesterday I held a lecture about the Iranian Kurdistan for members of the Swedish Social Democratic Youth (SSU) in Stockholm. SSU is currently organizing a series of lectures about the different parts of Kurdistan and I was invited to speak about the Kurds in Iran – with focus on methods of struggle, future opportunities and the latest developments in Iran and Kurdistan. It was a very interesting lecture with many interesting questions and opinions.

Today I am travelling to Geneva to attend the 7th Session of the United Nations Universal Periodic Review Working Group, Iran have submitted its Human Rights Report (read here), which will be reviewed during this session. I will, together with two other members of the PDKI’s leadership, Dr. Miro Aliyar and Abdullah Hicab, represent the Kurdish people in Iranian Kurdistan. Representatives of other nationalities in Iran (Azerbaijan, Balouchistan and Ahwaz) will also be present. Something noteworthy is that out of the 66 individuals currently on death row in Iran, 53 are from Ahwaz, Kurdistan (21 of the 53 are from Kurdistan) and Balochistan.

We will hold meetings with representatives of several Permanent Delegations, Netherlands, Chile, Nigeria, US, Canada, Azerbaijan, Mexico, Bangladesh, France, Greece, Turkey and Bahrain, to attempt to persuade them to putt more pressure on Iran during the review of their Human Rights Report. Our first meeting is with John W. Limbert, who is the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Iran in State Department’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, which I look forward to.

We will also take part in several side events, with the help of the UNPO.

On Friday the 12th of February I will, Dr Alireza Nazmi, Mr. Nasser Boladai and Mr. Adnan Torfi speak about religious Discrimination, representation in political bodies, economic discrimination and expropriation of land, arbitrary arrest, torture, judicial procedure, and execution, Linguistic and cultural discrimination and the media, and Violations of the right to Freedom of Assembly. Representatives of several states have said they will attend and it is likely that an Iranian delegation will be present.

We will also take part in a large demonstration organized to shed more light on the Human Rights situation in Iran, taking place in the Place des Nations, on Monday the 15th of February. Please attend and and show your support if you are nearby .

The International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran reports that:

In the aftermath of the student protest rally in front of the School of Law and Political Sciences in Tehran University on November 16, 2009, seven students were arrested by security agents outside the university, and their whereabouts and charges against them are unknown. Following their protest rally regarding the execution of Ehsan Fatahyan; Pakhshan Azizi, Amanj Heidari, Leila Mohammadi, Ahmad Ismaili, Sarveh Veisi are five of the Kurdish students who were arrested by the security forces and have not been released yet.

According to Amirkabir News Bulletin the arrested student names are as follows:

1 – Ahmad Ismaili, Audit student at the University of Economic Affairs

2 – Amanj Rahimi, Insurance Management student at the University of Economic Affairs

3 – Abdullah Arefi, student at the Allameh University

4 – Pakhshan Azizi, Social Assistance student at the University of Applied Science

5 – Leila Mohammadi, Physical Education student at the Al-Zahra University

6 – Sarveh Weisi, Physical Education student at the Al-Zahra University

7 – Hajhar Yousefi, Agriculture Engineering student at the University of Applied Science

Some sources have said that three female students from Tehran University with the names of Sarveh Weisi, Leila Mohammadi, and Pakhshan Azizi, who have been on hunger strike in prison for more than 8 days, have been under torture, harassment, intimidation, and threats of rape by the Ministry of Information agents.

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Iran’s Revolutionary Guard arrested Kawa Ghasemi Krmanshari, a leading member of the Human Rights Organization of Kurdistan, in his home on Wednesday.

It appears that Krmanshari was arrested in order to prevent him to continue to report about the human rights violations in Iranian Kurdistan and Iran. The regime in Iran has arrested several leading human rights activists and journalists during the last couple of days, just before the anniversary of the 1979 revolution in Iran, which is on the 11th of February.

The International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran describes Krmanshari as “one of the most important sources of objective human rights information and analysis in Iran, and one of the few still courageously working to document, in a scientific way, the deprivation of human rights there”.

Krmanshari, who is 25-years-old, holds a law degree and is a well-known human rights defender, his work is widely recognized for its quality and detail and his personal attention to political prisoners and their families.

Iran’s different security services have pressured the Human Rights Organisation of Kurdistan to halt its activities, several members of the organization have been arrested during the last couple of years, including the founder of the organization Mohammad Sadiq Kaboudvand, who has been in custody since June 2007. Kaboudvand was sentenced to an 11-year prison term; he was convicted solely on the basis of his human rights activities.