www.newsandletters.org
|
|
NEWS & LETTERS, April 2004Our Life and Times by Kevin A. BarryKurdish unrestA fight between Arab and Kurdish soccer fans erupted in the city of Qamishli, Syria, March 14, when Arab fans began chanting slogans in defense of Saddam Hussein. Syrian security forces fired on the crowd and 14 Kurds were killed. The next day, riots erupted in Hasake, a town of Arabs and Kurds, near Qamishli. Kurdish protesters set fire to government buildings. Dozens were killed, hundreds wounded and hundreds more were arrested. A few days earlier, Iranian Kurds in the city of Mahabad poured into the streets to celebrate that Kurdish autonomy and control over the Kurdish provinces in northern Iraq had been recognized by the interim Iraqi constitution. The crowd of thousands chanted slogans against the Iranian regime. Iranian troops fired and killed one youth and injured four others. The Kurds are one of the largest ethnic minorities in the world without a country of their own. There are 15 million Kurds in Turkey, six million in Iran, five million in Iraq and almost two million in Syria. The prospect of autonomy in Iraq has encouraged Kurds elsewhere. In Turkey, the Kurds are not even recognized as an ethnic minority and have been subjected to brutal repression. In Syria, a campaign of Arabization in 1962 stripped many Kurds of Syrian citizenship, brought in an Arab population to settle in Kurdish villages, replaced Kurdish names with Arab names, and banned the teaching of Kurdish at Kurdish schools. Today 225,000 Kurds in Syria are designated as "foreigners" and 25,000 are categorized as "unregistered." Syria’s Kurds want full rights enjoyed by other citizens. They are demanding the recognition of the Kurdish identity and culture, specifically education in the Kurdish language, human rights, and an end to Arabization. --Sheila Sahar |
|
Home l News & Letters Newspaper l Back issues l News and Letters Committees l Dialogues l Raya Dunayevskaya l Contact us l Search Published by News and Letters Committees |
