As we approach the anniversary of Jina Amini’s death at the hands of Iran’s “Morality Police”, Sarah Glynn talked politics with Gordyaen Jermayi, a human rights activist originally from Rojhelat or East Kurdistan – the part that’s in Iran. Below are some highlights – lightly edited for clarity. You can listen to the interview at the link above.
After the initial excitement surrounding the protests, and the widespread adoption of the slogan of Women Life Freedom – often by people with no concept of its radical source or meaning – Iran has faded from the international news. So, I want to take the opportunity to find out what the situation is there today. But, first, can you remind us of the position of the Kurdish minority in Iran and of their role in the protests over the last year?
It’s the main slogan, Jin Jiyan Azadi… The context behind this slogan is the leading project behind this whole revolution… And Jina was killed because she was a woman and a Kurdish woman… The most intense protests were actually in Kurdistan and then in Baluchistan, and then in other parts of Iran…
I think it would be very helpful to look at what the demands of the revolution are, and how they might vary in the periphery and in the centre in Tehran.
Persians already have some of their rights as the ruling people. But the Kurdish people don’t have many of those rights, for example, the right to the mother tongue… the list is very long. If you look at the numbers, the majority of arrests… are just from Kurdistan. And also the numbers for executions, for torture… The regime treats the Baluch people even worse.
I was wondering to what extent economic issues are entering into the protests.
The budget that the government gave to Isfahan was five times more than the entire budget that it gave to the four Kurdish majority provinces… The economy is very bad there. The people are dealing with extreme poverty. That’s why a phenomenon like Kolbari or Sookhtbari exists [cross-border porters in Kurdistan and Baluchistan]. Where a lot of people can’t find any jobs…they just go for this very dangerous job in which the regime kills and injures them all the time… The regime basically bans any productive economic activity… Where I come from, Urmia, it’s a major hotspot for agriculture, and the majority of the lands that are under agriculture, they belong to the people affiliated with the regime… If Kurds want to farm, or if they want to work, the regime puts a lot of pressure on them…. There were some reports that, in some villages in Kurdistan, the regime has forced people to become members of the IRGC [the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps] or the Basij organisation [a “voluntary” paramilitary militia] in order to be allowed to take their livestock out on the mountains for grazing…
To what extent do people recognise the Kurdish leading role, and how has the fact that the protests have come from the periphery and not from Tehran impacted their subsequent development?
This revolution is the revolution of oppressed people, because, so far, the major protests and the major crackdowns have been outside of Persian regions… In the first month when the protests were very intense everywhere, everyone knew that this revolution started in Kurdistan, and later it spread to Baluchistan… But unfortunately, after a few months, the Persian opposition groups in the west – especially the Pahlavis [supporters of the son of the former Shah, Reza Pahlavi] and the right wing and basically the Iranian extremists – changed everything because of their power, especially in the media, and they tried to introduce this revolution as a nationalistic Iranian revolution…
I wonder if you could talk a bit about the role of organised political groups, Kurdish groups and Iranian left groups as well.
These parties have historical roots in Kurdistan, especially the KDPI [the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran]… and popularity because of their history and their role in the first resistance against the Islamic Republic… In Jina’s revolution… they tried to put all their disputes away and work together towards a common goal, which was fighting the regime and helping the people out. These parties played a great role in organising people and leading them to peaceful protests. If you check their statements, they were always calling people out for peaceful protests. They didn’t want to directly get involved inside East Kurdistan because they said that if they joined the people on the streets the regime would basically bomb all the cities and villages in [East] Kurdistan, as they bombed the Kurdish parties’ bases in Iraqi Kurdistan just one week after Jina’s death…
We know what we’re against, but what are they arguing for?
All these parties are promoting the idea of a federal Iran. And they’re actually working together with other parties from other minorities like Baluch and Azeri and Ahwazi Arabs…
I forgot to answer your question about the leftist Persians. Unfortunately, when you talk to them, they all claim that they support the rights of minorities and stuff like that, but at the end, they all agree on one thing, and that is that the territorial integrity of Iran should not be changed.
How important are more traditional left issues and are trade unions playing any role? In 1979, trade union strikes played a huge role, so why have we not seen anything approaching that this time?
After the Islamic Revolution, the regime, or I would say the IRGC, took over all the power, from economy, to politics, to culture – everything. So, these unions… they’re just there for the sake of formality… The managers, the people there, they’re mostly the regime’s people… The majority of these massive industrial institutions or companies are now owned by IRGC, so they wouldn’t let that happen. It’s their own companies and their own institutions… These unions can’t do anything as they did in 1970s and 80s.
I wondered if you could just sum up the current situation for us, because it seems that the protests themselves have diminished, but, at the same time, we’ve seen no diminution, of the crackdown on people, and a lot more arrests, disappearances, reports of torture, and an awful lot of death penalties being put into practice, though they don’t get mentioned in international media because they’re hidden as ordinary crimes rather than political crimes. So, what’s happening? And do you see the possibility of protests re-emerging again, in the future, perhaps on the anniversary of Jina’s death?
Although the protests have somehow died and stopped, the crackdown has not… (The weekly protests on every Friday still continue in Baluchistan. It’s really surprising that the regime isn’t so aggressive towards them as they were in the first days of revolution…) We have daily reports of arrests, especially in Kurdistan… They basically arrest anyone in Kurdistan who publicly… protest or do any type of civil or political activity. They even arrest the environmental activists – especially during the fires, the fires that they [i.e. the state] set to the jungles themselves. At the same time, they have intensified executing people in prisons, and usually more than 50% of these cases are Kurdish… The majority of these people who are being executed, they never have a fair trial or even access to a lawyer… Some of these cases exist but nobody knows what are their names or why they have been executed… The majority of Kurdish cities and towns are still militarised. There are military patrols in almost all cities every day. And in the first days of revolution, they started putting checkpoints on the entrances and exits of all cities, which still exist in most cities and towns. East Kurdistan has been militarised since the Islamic Revolution… but after this Jina’s revolution, things got more intense.
As it’s summer… and the regime does this every year: they set fire to the forests and pastures across Kurdistan and they use it as a means to fight against the Kurdish parties or Kurdish fighters that are hiding in the forest. And, also, they do this to distract people’s attention from the revolution or the main issue: so the people get busy with this for some time. Also, it’s part of their systematic programme to turn Kurdistan into an unliveable environment so that the people just move to another place, like a demographic change. Besides setting fire to the forest, they have dried Lake Urmia, which is the biggest lake in Kurdistan. This, also, is causing a lot of problems and tensions in the community…
And the other half of my last question, do you see the potential for protests rising up again?
This is very hard to predict because we almost have one month [until the anniversary of Jina’s death]… A lot of people are saying that Kurdistan and Baluchistan should not start the protest again because the regime will just massacre people and the centre will stay silent, which is partly true… But just as we’re talking, the regime is preparing. We are seeing videos and footage that the regime is deploying heavy reinforcements to different cities, especially the cities that were really active in the protests. They are limiting the internet and also the electricity. So, I think that the regime is preparing for this. But I really don’t know if the people in Kurdistan or Baluchistan will start the protests as they did last year. We just have to wait and see what’s going to happen…
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Jermayi is concerned that Rojhelat does not get the attention given to other parts of Kurdistan. To help us keep up to date with what is happening he has suggested the following links (the last three are in Persian).
https://kurdistanhumanrights.org/en/
