The Iranian militaries have argued that the forests and the jungles have been used by the Kurdish guerrillas; hence they should blaze in inferno for the ‘sin’ they have committed against the rule of God on the earth. The Iranian officials have failed to realise that the forests have not been used by the Kurdish guerrillas and the guerrillas have not certain easy-target places. The fact that decimation of more than 7000 hectares of Kurdish forests has not cost a life of a single Kurdish guerrilla, too well explains this claim.
The crossing of the Kurdish guerrillas within the mountainous and rocky forests of Kurdistan does not establish the reason for conflagration and decimation of the nature of the country. By setting fires on the Kurdish jungles, destroying the whole county side and forcing thousands of Kurdish farmers into poverty, the Iranian regime is committing crimes against the Kurdish people. Over 800 conflagrations, decimating of more than 7000 hectares in few months is the act of Iranian ecological terrorism, I do not intend to exaggerate but I can not avoid terming of it as genocide, the genocide of Kurdish natural lives, and a soft-genocide that the Iranian regime is committing against the Kurds.
In the eyes of the Iranian authorities the Kurdish people who have lived in the region for the last 9000 years, led the agricultural revolution and domesticated the animals, do not have a right to a healthy and safe environment for they are the ‘separatists’ or the ‘apostates’, or the enemy of the God; a title that is conferred upon many Kurdish activists who serve their life sentence or on the death row. The Environmental problems caused by 800 times of forest-burning is only one side of the coin, and the decimation of the vegetation and the animal lives and the destruction of more than 7000 hectares of land is the another side. This is an act of Iranian ecological terrorism; as I said, I do not intend to exaggerate but I can not avoid terming of it as genocide, a soft-genocide the Iranian regime is committing against the Kurds.
The Free Life Party of Kurdistan (PJAK) released a declaration in October in which it outlined seven articles as the ground upon which a peaceful and democratic solution to the Kurdish issue could be founded. In the declaration PJAK demonstrated its intention for democratic methods devoid of any violence to solve the Kurdish issue. In 6th article PJAK stated that: “People without access to their own language, will not be able to represent themselves or make manifest of their being as a people, consequently no one would be able to discuss their being as a people since they will be emptied of their own cultural, ethnical and national essence. Therefore, the legal recognition of different languages in Iran particularly the Kurdish language in education and in all administrative and non-administrative institutions is the initial condition.”
Not long after the PJAK’s declaration, the Iranian Deputy for Foreign Minister claimed that they were intending to ban the use of any language in Iran except the Persian language. And in November the Iranian authority officially banned the use of Kurdish language in the schools of Seqiz, a Kurdish city in East Kurdistan (Iran). The Iranian prohibition of the Kurdish langue, after the PJAK’s declaration, is an explicit response to the PJAK’s call for peace and the recognition of Kurdish and other languages in Iran. To ban a language that is spoken by more than 40 million people is another dimension of the soft-genocide of Kurdish people.
More than 800 occasions of fire-setting of Kurdish forests and decimation of more than 7000 hectares of land, the act of prohibition of the Kurdish language in the schools of Seqiz, is an outrageous act which shall neither by accepted by the Kurdish people nor by any one who is endowed by conscious and honours. The occupying powers of Kurdistan have not hesitated to apply any inhuman strategies to suppress the Kurds, but none of these vicious acts have yielded them any fruit. Saddam Hussein, for instance, gassed 5000 innocent Kurds, only within few hours, in the city of Helebce, but the Kurds resisted and did not submit to the dictators. The Iranian regime should take a lesson from dictators of such a character and refrain from conducting such atrocities against the Kurdish people and the Kurdish natural lives.
To conclude with, I should say that the Kurdish people have two options in dealing with such acts of terrors and soft-genocide committed by the occupying powers of Kurdistan. They can either submit and assimilate or resist and defend their values and identities. Notwithstanding, the history of the Kurds has well demonstrated the fact that the Kurds neither submit nor do they assimilate; they are destined to resist!
http://www.pjak.org/english.php?id=1200
