The Feast of Ramadan was celebrated at Makhmour Refugee Camp in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI) on Monday.
After prayers in the mosque, residents of the camp visited to the cemetery.
The residents later exchanged greetings at the Centre for the Families of Martyrs.
Mele* Elî Spêrtî gave an address at the Centre, commemorating martyrs who have fallen in the cause of freedom, and saluting Kurdish fighters and all Muslims.
He said:
“The Feast signifies peace and unity. On this day, we should be living in unity and security. Those who have been fighting in the mountains against the invasion are the most sacred of all to us. I salute them, and express our infinite support for them. They will prevail, because they are carrying out a fight for truth and honour. They will not let a nation be destroyed. Those who remain silent in the face of invasion definitely lack human faculties. We will never accept silence.”
Following Spêrtî’s address, the people went out to exchange greetings with all camp residents.
Makhmour Camp, located around 100 km from the KRI’s capital city of Erbil (Hewlêr), houses Kurdish refugees who had to migrate from Turkey after village burnings and forced displacements by the Turkish military in 1993-1995. The camp, recognised by the United Nations, has been under embargo by the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), the dominant party in the KRI, since July 2019. It has also been intermittently targeted in Turkish airstrikes.
* Kurdish title for an Islamic clergy, ‘Mullah’ in Persian
