Tag: Karlos Zurutuza

The Humanitarian Rescue Fleet Faces Hurricane Meloni — Global Issues

Migrants somewhere in the central Mediterranean are contacted by the Open Arms crew. Credit: Karlos Zurutuza / IPS
  • by Karlos Zurutuza (barcelona)
  • Inter Press Service

BARCELONA, Dec 13 (IPS) – It was a hellish journey aboard a crammed boat amid three-meter waves. It had started on a Libyan beach, and at the gates of winter. On December 11, the last 500 migrants rescued from the waters of the Mediterranean disembarked exhausted but relieved in the south of Italy. They had all been rescued by vessels run by NGOs Doctors Without Borders (MSF) and SOS Humanity.

The response to the humanitarian emergency in the Central Mediterranean is one of the challenges for the new Italian far-right government led by Giorgia Meloni, its prime minister.

As it happens, a serious diplomatic crisis broke out last November between Rome and Paris after Italy prevented the landing of the SOS Humanity’s ship, the Ocean Viking and diverted it to the port of Toulon, in the south of France.

About the same time, the Geo Barents (run by MSF) refused to comply with a partial disembarkation order from Rome, which would have allowed only some of the 572 rescued to leave the ship. MSF ended up winning the fight and all those rescued finally got to set foot in Catania (Sicily).

“The selective disembarkation does not have any regulatory framework. It is nothing more than a new attempt to block the NGOs,” Juan Matías Gil, head of the MSF Search and Rescue mission in Italy, told IPS over the phone.

However, all those rescued on the 11th landed without facing any further administrative obstacles. Gil cited the recent crisis with France as a possible motivation for the Meloni government finally allowing the ship to dock and let the rescued people disembark.

Lunchtime aboard the crowded deck of the Open Arms. Delays in granting a safe harbour only contribute to the exhaustion of those rescued. Credit: Karlos Zurutuza / IPS
Lunchtime aboard the crowded deck of the Open Arms. Delays in granting a safe harbour only contribute to the exhaustion of those rescued. Credit: Karlos Zurutuza / IPS

The Italian Ministry of the Interior claimed it was the weather, “the imminence of a storm and the need not to saturate the reception centres.” There has been no change whatsoever in Rome’s policies, Italian officials stressed.

Successive Italian governments have been the Mediterranean rescued fleet’s fiercest adversary since 2017, two years after it went to sea.

Closed ports, requisitioned ships, judicial processes: Rome has resorted to every tool at its disposal to block a fleet that today has nine ships operated by different NGOs.

“Under the previous government of Mario Draghi, we already had a glimpse to those policies that Meloni subscribes to today, but there was hardly any talk about it,” recalls Gil, an Argentine today based in Rome. “Back then, we could easily spend up to ten or twelve days waiting until we were granted a safe port.”

Migrants in Zuwara (Libya), shortly before jumping into a boat and trying to reach Europe. Credit: Karlos Zurutuza / IPS

According to UNHCR data updated on December 4, more than 94,000 people arrived in Italy by the sea in 2022. Most departed from Libya, almost always aboard fragile rafts and skiffs run by human traffickers.

Although international law requires the granting of a safe port as soon as possible to any ship with vulnerable people on board, the rescue fleet faces waits that can exceed two weeks.

Gil sees it as yet one more ingredient in a campaign against the rescue fleet.

“On the one hand, there is the use of resources which lack a legal basis, such as selective landing. Making us go to France or Spain means tripling the distances and drastically reducing the time we spend in the rescue zone”, says Gil.

Migrants somewhere in the central Mediterranean are contacted by the Open Arms crew. Credit: Karlos Zurutuza / IPS

He also points to the “criminalization” of NGOs by the Italian government. They are often accused of collusion with the trafficking mafias, and even of posing a “pull factor”. However, Gil stresses that the fleet as a whole is only responsible for 14% of the landings in Italy, according to data from the Italian Institute for International Political Studies.

“What stings in Rome is that we make the problem visible, that’s all,” said Gil.

“A cheating game”

That the vast majority of the rescued arrive from Libya results from instability caused by the absence of a stable government since the 2011 war. Rival factions in the east and west are still fighting for control of the country.

To contain the migratory flow, Europe began training and equipping a Libyan coast guard fleet in 2016. But the force is widely accused of using violence against migrants and being infiltrated by trafficking mafias.

Iñigo Mijangos poses next to the Aita Mari, an old Basque fishing boat converted into a rescue boat. Credit: Karlos Zurutuza / IPS

NGOs say that many of those migrants returned to land end up being victims of human rights abuses in the same Libyan detention centres managed by the two Libyan governments.

According to International Organization for Migration data, more than 25,000 people have died or disappeared in the Mediterranean since 2014. As the southern border of the European Union turns into a mass grave, the humanitarian rescue fleet faces all kinds of obstacles to avoid more drownings.

Draconian inspections by the Italian Coast Guard can block ships in port for months. With an old Basque fishing boat converted into a rescue ship, Salvamento Marítimo Humanitario (SMH), a Spanish NGO, knows this first-hand.

SMH coordinator Iñigo Mijangos spoke to IPS from Vinarós in eastern Spain, where the rescue ship is currently docked.

“Just missing a fire extinguisher can have an impact on the qualification of the entire Spanish merchant fleet that makes international voyages,” explained the 51-year-old Basque. They undergo inspections by the General Directorate of the Spanish Merchant Marine before leaving port, to prevent problems with Italian officials.

The remains of a shipwreck on a beach in western Libya. Credit: Karlos Zurutuza / IPS

“As the total calculation is done on a triennial basis, we have postponed our next mission until next January, just after the start of the new year,” Mijangos clarified.

Italian politicians have on occasion faced consequences for overreach against the fleet. Matteo Salvini, who served as Italy’s Interior Minister between June 2018 and September 2019, currently faces a judicial inquiry into his efforts to block a hundred migrants rescued by Open Arms, a Spanish NGO, from disembarking in Italy. They were forced to stay aboard for 19 days, in apparent violation of Italian and international sea laws.

Salvini faces 15 years in prison in a process that started in November 2021 but which defence lawyers have so far managed to stonewall. Matteo Piantedosi, formerly Salvini’s right hand, now has his old job, as minister of Interior in the Meloni government.

From the port of Barcelona, David Lladó, head of the Search and Rescue mission with Open Arms, spoke to IPS while his crew struggle to set sail for the central Mediterranean on December 24.

“We are counting on the delays in granting us a port, so this time we are carrying food for 30 days and 300 people. We don’t know how long they will have us waiting,” said the 38-year-old sailor.

Delays can get even longer when rescue operations are carried out in Maltese territorial waters, which are near Libya. Lladó recalls that the government in Valletta rarely allows rescue ships to disembark— the last time was in July 2020. But international sea rescue protocols dictate that they first try the island, before contacting Rome.

“It’s like a cheating game in which those in charge change the rules as the game progresses,” claims Lladó. “At sea, on land, in court… You never know what will come next, but you can’t just wait in port.”

© Inter Press Service (2022) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service

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Defending Identity in the Face of Harassment, Stigma and Death — Global Issues

23-year-old Varin poses next to a mural for queer rights in Sulaymaniyah. It was not long before it was vandalized. Credit Andoni Lubaki/IPS
  • by Karlos Zurutuza (sulaymaniyah, iraq)
  • Inter Press Service

SULAYMANIYAH, Iraq, Nov 25 (IPS) – It’s mostly people in their twenties sitting on a terrace in the shade of a beautiful grove of trees: black clothes, piercings, tattoos and some purple streaks in their hair.

It could be a trendy cafe in Berlin, Paris or any other European capital, but the sunset call to prayer reminds us that we are in Sulaymaniyah. After Erbil, it’s the second city in the Kurdish Autonomous Region of Iraq.

We cannot disclose the cafe’s exact coordinates, nor the full name of the person who has brought us here. She is dressed in white -shorts and a T-shirt- and boasts a rainbow bracelet on her left wrist. She asks to be quoted as Kween. “It’s just queen with a k for Kurdish,” she explains. Kween is a trans woman.

The youngest of five children from a Kurdish family in Diyala, a district in the east of the country, this 33-year-old Kurd admits to IPS that she was “a boring man” for the first 25 years of her life.

“I learned to block my needs. However, I first dressed as a woman in my mother’s clothes and also put on makeup when I was only five,“ she recalls. In a dress, she adds, “I feel the person I am and the person I have always been.”

But that freedom mostly enjoyed in solitude has its price. How to forget the beating her older brother gave her when she was first caught, at six; the humiliation and bullying she suffered at school…

She was almost killed when she was 24. Someone contacted her on the Internet and asked to meet on the outskirts of the city. But they were five individuals, waiting to give her a thrashing. Completely numb from the beatings and covered in mud and blood, Kween still mustered the strength to walk to a local judge’s office.

“You have two options: either file a complaint and stain your family’s name forever, or simply stop doing what you do,” the magistrate blurted at her. Back home, she could not say what she had gone through or, above all, why. Even today, no one in Diyala knows that Kween is a woman.

Against all odds, she’s been working for several years with a foreign NGO focusing on the protection of vulnerable groups. Among other projects, she´s working on a list of Kurdish words to talk about the rights of the LGBTI collective that are not offensive.

An example: Hawragazkhwaz (literally, “someone attracted by members of their own sex”), is, so far, the only inclusive form for “homosexual;” miles away from commonly-used terms that include ideas such as “paedophilia” or “rape”.

Kween has not yet decided to have surgery or take hormones, but she hasn’t had much time for it either. The work at the NGO and the search for a place in society for the members of the LGBTI community, she says, absorb most of her time.

“If I have a mission in life, this is it.”

Kween, a 33-year-old Kurdish trans woman, says she only dresses as a woman in “safe places”.. Credit: Andoni Lubaki/IPS

“Immoral conduct”

A transgender woman is beaten, burned alive and thrown in a dumpster; assailants torture, then murder a gay man while his partner is forced to watch; a lesbian is stabbed to death while being told to stop her “immoral conduct”.

These are just three cases among the many included in a Human Rights Watch report on the LGBTI collective in Iraq released in march 2022. Kidnapping, rape, torture and murder of queer people at the hands of armed groups, “often by the state’s security forces,” are also reported.

“The members of this community live under the constant threat of being captured and killed by the Iraqi police, and under total impunity,” Rasha Younes, an HRW researcher, denounced in the report.

The images of gay people the Islamic State pushed from rooftops are still fresh in everyone’s minds. Also the ones Doski Azad, a Kurdish trans woman, posted on Instagram before her body was found in a ditch last February. She was murdered by her own brother.

During the rule of the Islamic State, many members of the LGBTI community were executed from rooftops or other high points in cities such as Mosul (Iraq) or Raqqa (Syria). Credit: Andoni Lubaki/IPS

“I know a lot of people who never go out on the streets,” Varin, a 23-year-old queer activist tells IPS from the same terrace. It was thanks to the Internet that she discovered that, like her, there were people who did not feel identified with any single gender expression.

The activist works in a swimming pool, but her chemistry studies have opened up a job opportunity for her in Qatar that she does not want to miss.

“I showed up for the job interview dressed as a demure woman and, of course, with long sleeves so the tattoos wouldn’t show,” she bursts out with a loud laugh.

Varin points to “around 30 members” within Sulaimaniyah LGBTI community. They meet in cafes like this one. Social networks also make it easier to get to know each other.

Do they organize protests? No, too dangerous. Actually, the mural that she will choose to pose for our photograph has already been vandalized (it would be completely destroyed a few days later).

Despite the threats, this Kurdish city has become the safest space in the country for members of the LGBTI community. Many queer people from the south of the country seek refuge in cities like Erbil, the Kurdish capital of Iraq.

The situation is by no means comparable, but Varin underlines that Erbil is still a very conservative city, “one of those in which time stands still during the month of Ramadan and where you can never let your guard down.”

Suicidal tendencies

In April 2021, several young men from Sulaimaniyah were arrested “for being homosexual and for their immoral conduct.” That´s how the leader of the operation labelled it before the press. The Sulaimaniyah Police refused to answer questions from IPS. Nonetheless, harassment seemingly extends to anyone who may dare to show any kind of support.

Such is the case of Rasan, a local NGO constantly forced to answer to justice for “promoting the LGBTI community.” They are still awaiting trial after the most recent lawsuit, filed by a member of the Kurdish parliament.

The campaign of harassment of members of the LGTBI community in Iraq condemns the majority to a life of isolation to avoid arrest, torture, and murder. Credit: Andoni Lubaki/IPS

From their office in Sulaimaniyah, Tanya Kamal Darwesh, director of Rasan, assures IPS that their mission is not to promote the LGTBI community but “to raise awareness in society about it.” But even more worrisome, she adds, is that the arrests of members of the collective are still common currency in Iraq´s Kurdish region.

“Instead of accepting the existence of these people, they insist on criminalizing them: they are accused of prostitution, drug trafficking or whatever else to kick them off the streets,” denounces the human rights activist.

“All the clans, the parties, the leaders, both religious and political, coincide in their animosity towards the queer collective. They often stick to religious issues to justify violence, or simply they make politics out of it,” rounds up Darwesh.

Their defenselessness is overwhelming, and the psychological impact of intolerance towards this group translates into cases of depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress and even suicidal tendencies.

That’s the diagnosis conveyed to IPS via videoconference by a trauma psychologist who prefers not to give her real name for the interview. She has been working with victims of sexual violence and torture in the Middle East for over a decade and she wants to avoid a veto at all costs.

Other than attacks at almost every level, she also highlights the risk of being “excluded from the labour market, or even from their own families in a region where they play such a key role.”

After several trips to the region, the specialist has had the chance to meet Varin and Kween in person. “Other than hope to the community, they also offer a space in which to ask questions,” she stresses. “Just by being visibly queer, they’re already showing great courage.”

© Inter Press Service (2022) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service

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The Women Who Fight Against the Ayatollahs from the Kurdish Mountains — Global Issues

PJAK copresident Zilan Vejin and a fellow fighter somewhere in the Kurdish mountains. Credit: Karlos Zurutuza/IPS
  • by Karlos Zurutuza (iran-iraq border)
  • Inter Press Service

IRAN-IRAQ BORDER, Nov 04 (IPS) – Iran-Iraq border -It usually takes hours of driving in a 4X4 before heading out on foot through a dense forest. There, protected under a sea of beech trees from the view of the drones, it is the guerrillas of the PJAK (Party for a Free Life in Kurdistan) who find us.

We are somewhere in the mountains across the border between Iran and Iraq. We cannot give our coordinates, nor can we photograph the guerrilla fighters or any spatial references that may give clues about their location. That’s the deal.

The PJAK is an organization made up mainly of Kurdish men and women from Iran fighting for the democratization of the country through the lines of “democratic confederalism,” a libertarian-left, culturally progressive ideology and political system defined by Abdullah Öcalan. He is the co-founder and leader of the PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party) in prison since 1999 and sentenced to life by the Turkish state.

Two women in their thirties invite us to take a seat around a table inside a humble mountain hut. One of them is Zilan Vejin, the co-president of PJAK. We ask her about the most pressing issue: the chain of protests in Iran that are challenging the Shia theocracy in power since 1979.

It was last September 16 when Mahsa Amini , a 22-year-old Iranian Kurdish woman, was beaten to death by the Iranian “morality police” for wearing the Islamic headscarf incorrectly. Since then, thousands of men and women have taken to the streets chanting “Women, Life, Freedom”, a slogan that, Vejin recalls, was coined by her movement during a 2013 meeting.

“The problem of women’s freedom is an issue whose importance was identified, analyzed and defined by our leadership 40 years ago. Today, all the peoples of Iran are facing it,” the guerrilla fighter tells IPS.

Several international organizations such as Amnesty International have denounced the difficulties of ethnic minorities -such as Kurds, Baluch or Arabs- in accessing education, employment or housing.

In addition to socioeconomic discrimination, all women regardless of their ethnicity have seemingly become the target of the theocratic government.

In its latest report on the country, Human Rights Watch denounced the marginalization of half the population in matters such as marriage, divorce, inheritance and child custody. The lack of options for women in situations such as domestic violence or child marriage is also noted by the NGO.

Could this civil uprising put an end to all this? The PJAK co-leader is optimistic.

“This revolt is very different from all those that have occurred in the 43 years that the ayatollahs have spent in power. It started in Kurdistan led by women, and from there it spread throughout the country because it brings together people of all nationalities within Iran,” claims the senior guerrilla fighter.

The hijab, she stresses, is “the excuse for a revolt that calls for freedom and democracy. People don’t just want reforms without seeking to change the current policies, the system and the administration”.

On whether the armed struggle can be one of the means to achieve it, Vejin sticks to the right to “legitimate defense”.

“The armed struggle is only a part of our strength that also includes civil, social and democratic actions. Of course, if the State commits massacres, we will not remain idle,” says the Kurdish woman.

The moment when Zilan Vejin was elected as PJAK co-leader during a meeting of the party´s leadership (Courtesy PJAK)

On the Iranian board

PJAK militia women are not the only Kurdish women in Iran ready to take up arms. There are women fighting alongside men in the ranks of the PDKI (Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan), while the PAK (Kurdistan Freedom Party) even has an all-female contingent.

The latter’s ultimate goal is the creation of an independent Kurdish state that includes the four parts into which it is currently divided (Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria).

Hana Hussein Yazdanpana, the spokesperson for the PAK women’s contingent, spoke to IPS by telephone from an unspecified location in the mountains. Apparently, their bases in the valley have become a recurring target for Iranian missiles.

PAK fighters carry the body of a fellow fighter after the last Iranian bombing of their bases in Iraq´s Kurdistan Region (Courtesy PAK)

“The last one happened on September 28: we lost ten of ours and 21 were injured. Iran has threatened us with doing it again if we don’t stop supporting the protests and giving shelter to those fleeing the country,” explained Yazdanpana.

According to her, the PAK has 3,000 Peshmerga (“Those who face death,” in Kurdish) fighters. One-third are women who received training from the American and German contingents, among others, included in the international coalition against the Islamic State.

They have also fought Tehran-backed Shiite militias operating on Iraqi soil. As to whether they will take advantage of that experience to fight against the ayatollahs, Yazdanpana was blunt.

“The fight must be peaceful. The protest will only be successful if the free world openly supports the people and takes action against the Islamic Republic.”

Other than in the Kurdish mountains, the guerrillas can also be found on the Internet. On its website, the Komala Party of Iranian Kurdistan defines itself as “a social democratic party that advocates for a free and democratic federal Iran.”

Komala guerrilla fighters somewhere in the mountains between Iran and Iraq (Courtesy Komala)

With its bases in the southeastern corner of the Kurdish Autonomous Region of Iraq -very close to the border with Iran- Komala claims to be the first Kurdish organization to ever set up a battalion of women fighters, back in 1982.

“When Komala was founded in 1969 one of its main pillars, besides socialism and Kurdish self-determination, was gender equality,” Zagros Khosravi, a member of its central committee, told IPS over the phone.

He pointed to a contingent of “a few hundred fighters deployed in the mountains,” but insisted that their main strength lies in the “thousands” that can be mobilized inside Iran. “Many of them have been trained in civil resistance tactics,” noted the guerrilla.

One of the most recent milestones, he added, was the creation, together with the PDKI, of a cooperation node between Kurdish-Iranian political parties. “You can see the result in the high level of participation of the Kurdish nation in these protests,” he added.

From the Kurdish Peace Institute, Kamal Chomani, a Kurdish affairs analyst, told IPS over the phone that coordination between the Kurdish-Iranian organizations will be “key” if a potential escalation of violence against the protests leads to an open armed conflict with the regime.

The differences between the different Kurdish-Iranian organizations, he added, respond to the diversity of the Kurdish political arc as a whole.

“Whereas in Syria and Turkey the majority of Kurds subscribe to a leftist, progressive and communalist ideology, in Iran and Iraq we come across a nationalist and traditionalist variable in which tribal keys are also crucial,” explained Chomani.

As to how these actors are deployed on the troubled Iranian chessboard, the expert foresees this scenario:

“The PJAK is the one with the most experience in guerrilla warfare due to its links with the PKK and they have great organizational capacity. The PDKI, and especially Komala, have strong roots in Iran because they have been very active politically and militarily since the 1970s, and that will allow them to mobilize fighters within the country.”

Meanwhile, Iranian women continue to take to the streets. According to data from the HRANA news agency -managed by human rights activists-an estimated 300 have been killed since the protests began. The number of detainees now exceeds 13,000.

© Inter Press Service (2022) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service

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A University for the Kurds of Syria — Global Issues

Just another day in the main hall of the Qamishli campus. Credit: Karlos Zurutuza/IPS
  • by Karlos Zurutuza (qamishli, syria)
  • Inter Press Service

QAMISHLI, Syria, Sep 27 (IPS) – There is a main hall as well as workshops, laboratories and, of course, a cafeteria, where the half-hour break flies by amid card games and laughs. It could well be any university if it wasn’t for those men armed with assault rifles at the entrance.

This is the campus of University of Rojava in Qamishli (700 kilometres northeast of Damascus), an institution that opened its doors in October 2016, in the midst of a war that still rages on.

“Lessons in the Kurdish language are one of our hallmarks,” Rohan Mistefa, the former dean, tells IPS from an office on the second floor. Other than the language of instruction, significant differences from other Syrian universities are also visible in the curriculum.

“We got rid of subjects such as Ideology and History of the Baath Party (in power in Damascus since 1963) and replaced it with `Democratic Culture,'” explains this Kurdish woman in her mid-forties. The creation of a Department of Science for Women (Jineoloij, in Kurdish), she adds, has been another milestone.

The University of Rojava hosts around 2,000 students on three campuses. There are, however, two other active universities in Syria’s northeast: Kobani, working since 2017, and Al- Sharq in Raqqa. The latter has been operating since last year in a city that was once the capital of the Islamic State in Syria.

“Unlike the universities of Kobani and Rojava, in Raqqa they study in Arabic because the majority of citizens there are Arabs,” says Mistefa, who is today co-responsible for coordinating between the three institutions.

Mustefa has been closely linked to the institution since its inception. She helped to found the first Kurdish university in Syria in her native district of Afrin in 2015. That pioneering initiative had to close its doors in 2018: territorially disconnected from the rest of the Kurdish Syrian territories, Afrin was taken over by Ankara-backed Islamist militias. It remains under occupation to this day.

“Many people ask us why we open schools and universities in the middle of the war. I always tell them that ours is a culture of building, and not that of destroying our neighbours and their allies”, says the Kurdish woman.

Ideologues and martyrs of the Kurdish cause are also present on the walls of the University of Rojava. Credit: Karlos Zurutuza/IPS

The Kurds call “Rojava” (“west”) their native land in northeast Syria. In the wake of the so-called “Arab spring” uprisings across the Middle East and North Africa in 2011, Kurds opted for what was then known as the “third way”: neither with the government nor with the opposition.

Twelve years on, the Kurdish minority in Syria coexists with Arabs and Syriacs in the so-called Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES). It’s in this corner of Syria, which shares borders with both Turkey and Iraq, where such a network of universities has been built. It now rivals the institutions of the Syrian Arab Republic government.

A “titanic task”

After the opening of the first Kurdish-language schools in the history of Syria, the University of Rojava is one more step forward in a revolution that has placed education among its main values.

It consists of nine faculties that offer free academic training in various Engineering branches, as well as Medicine, Law, Educational Sciences, Administration and Finance, Journalism and, of course, Kurdish Philology.

“I chose Philology because I love writing poems in Kurdish; I am very much into folklore, literature… everything that has to do with our culture,” Tolen Kenjo, a second-year student from the neighbouring city of Hasaka tells IPS.

The 19-year old still remembers being punished at school whenever she would utter a word in her mother tongue. For more than four decades, the ban on the Kurdish language in Syria was just another chapter within an ambitious assimilation plan that also included the displacement of the country’s Kurdish population and even the deprivation of citizenship of tens of thousands of them.

The cafeteria during the half-hour break. Credit: Karlos Zurutuza/IPS

Today, the university’s walls are covered with posters: climate maps, the photosynthesis cycle, quotes from the Russian classics. For the first time in Syria, all are in the Kurdish language. The corridors get crammed with students during the breaks between classes, often amid the laughter that comes from a group of students playing volleyball in the courtyard.

In the Department of English Language and Translation, we find Jihan Ayo, a Kurdish woman who has been teaching here for more than three years. Ayo is one of the more than 200,000 displaced (UN figures) who arrived from Serekaniye in 2019, when the Kurdish district was invaded by Islamist militias under Ankara´s wing.

“Turkey’s attacks or those by cells of the Islamic State are still a common currency here,” Ayo tells IPS. When it comes to lessons, she points to a “titanic task.”

Work is still underway to translate teaching materials into Kurdish — to train not only students but also those who will become their teachers. Among other things, Ayo remembers those “very tough” 18 months during which the pandemic forced lessons to be suspended.

“We tried to cope with things online; we got help from volunteer teachers from practically all over the world, but, of course, not everyone here has the means to connect to the Internet…”

She also faces a fight to gain the trust of many local citizens, towards an educational network that has no recognition outside this corner of Syria. Although the Kurdish administration administers the region, the “official” schools -those ran by Damascus- continue to function and, of course, they stick to the pre-war curriculum.

Teaching in the middle of a war has been one of the challenges faced by the Syrian Kurds. Credit: Karlos Zurutuza/IPS

Recognition

In a comprehensive report published in September 2022 on the university system in northeast Syria, Rojava researchers Information Center (an independent press organization) stress the importance of international recognition that can make the institution more attractive to students.

“While the quality of the education received at these universities in itself is comparable to other institutions’ in the region, the lack of recognition abroad may make it impossible for the students to continue their studies outside of Syria, find employment abroad, or even have their technical knowledge recognized by companies and institutions not tied to the AANES,” the report warns.

It also claimks that the University of Rojava maintains cooperation agreements with at least eight foreign universities, including Washington State University (U.S.), Emden/Leer University of Applied Sciences (Germany) and the University of Parma (Italy)..

It´s just a ten-minute walk from the campus to the headquarters of the Democratic Union Party (PYD), the dominant political party among Kurds in Syria. From his office, PYD co-chairman Salih Muslim wanted to highlight the role of universities as “providers of necessary cadres to build and develop the places they belong to and come from.”

“Our universities are ready to cooperate and exchange experiences with all the universities and international institutions to gain more experience and they are welcome to do so,” Muslim told IPS.

Despite the lack of international recognition, academic life goes on in this corner of Syria. Noreldin Hassan arrived from Afrin after the 2018 invasion and today is about to fulfil his dream of graduating in Journalism. The 27-year-old tells IPS that his university is “working in the right direction” to achieve international recognition. However, he has chosen not to wait for a degree to begin his career, and he has been working as a reporter for eight years already .

“Getting a diploma is important, but, at the end of the day, journalists learn by sheer practice while looking for stories and covering those,” stresses the young man.

The last story he covered? One about those women forced to marry mercenaries on a Turkish payroll. The story he´d like to cover the most? No surprises here:

“The day when the Kurds of Afrin can finally go back home.”

© Inter Press Service (2022) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service

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From Reincarnation to Exodus — Global Issues

Jundi Jundoyan, an Armenian Yezidi spiritual leader poses next to dozens of blankets which preserve old relics. Credit: Andoni Lubaki/IPS
  • by Karlos Zurutuza (ardashar, armenia)
  • Inter Press Service

ARDASHAR, Armenia, Aug 23 (IPS) – There are those cows watching the fight in the mud of rusty Soviet cars; there are those tethered dogs that bark next to bathtubs full of rainwater, or those cats that frolic in freedom. This is Armenia, a state of three million deep in the heart of the Caucasus region.

At 30 kilometers west of Yerevan (Armenia’s capital), Ardashar could well be a regular Armenian village were it not for the fact that most of its 700 inhabitants belong to the Yezidi community. Jundi Jundoyan, a local spiritual leader, awaits IPS at the entrance of his house. At 68, he boasts that many Armenians have asked him about his ancestral cult. Jundoyan is always willing to explain things, he just asks for patience.

God, who is also the sun, he explains, has 3,000 names and seven archangels. He created the world from a pearl, but then he disregarded it. He also brought Adam and Eve to life and forced Malak Tawus, the sacred peacock (the chief archangel) to serve them. But Tawus refused: why should one bow to the whims of a couple of simple mortals? In the end, that dispute between him and God was settled and the fallen archangel was finally redeemed.

It’s an ancestral cult that has incorporated elements of Mazdaism, Zoroastrianism, Christianity and Islam over the centuries, and which has around half a million followers in the Middle East and another half in the diaspora.

The Yezidis, however, are not originally from the southern Caucasus but from somewhere in northern Mesopotamia. In fact, Jundoyan explains it all in Kurmanyi (a variant of Kurdish spoken in Turkey and Syria).

It was the beginning of the 20th century when many fled to the Caucasus – along with Armenians and Syriacs – escaping genocide in Anatolia. Jundoyan remembers it just before walking into a room where dozens of blankets are stacked, which, he claims, preserve “treasures brought from Lalish (his most sacred temple, in northern Iraq) and many other relics.”

Precisely, the largest Yezidi temple in the world stands a few kilometers from here. Built in 2019 thanks to private contributions it also hosts a set of statues of Armenian Yezidi great men, including that of an Iraqi Kurdish woman. It is Nadia Murad, one of those young women enslaved by the Islamic State in 2014 during the genocide perpetrated against the Yezidis of Sinjar (northern Iraq). Murad was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize four years later.

“What did France, America, etc. do when the Islamic State massacred thousands of our people in Iraq and enslaved all those women?” Jundoyan blurts out, shortly before asking for a toast to the “martyrs”: both those from Anatolia from over a hundred years ago as well as the more recent ones from Iraq.

And then there are those who left. The Armenian Yezidis were close to 100,000 individuals in the times of the USSR, but the last census (in 2011) placed them at just 35,000. Those who remain try to survive through farming or herding.

“Everyone is leaving for Russia,” laments the host.

A Yezidi shepherd in mount Aragats (Armenia) produces books written in the Cyrillic alphabet. Credit: Karlos Zurutuza/IPS.

“Hate speech”

The Yezidi Center for Human Rights is an NGO founded in 2018 focused on protecting the rights of this community.

One of its most active members is Sashik Sultanyan, a 41-year-old lawyer who faces six years in prison for “incitement to hatred”. An interview he gave in June 2020 on a Yezidi radio channel in Iraq earned him a complaint from Veto Armenia, a far-right organization.

Someone took care to translate (from Kurdish into Armenian) a conversation in which Sultanyan spoke of “discrimination” towards his people. He denounced that Yezidi lands are being expropriated under legal pretexts and that their linguistic and cultural rights are not respected. The Armenian prosecutor’s office speaks of a process “in accordance with national and international law.”

For its part, Amnesty International has denounced an attack against freedom of expression and the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights is asking Armenia to withdraw criminal charges they label as “intimidating.”

From his office, Sultanyan tells IPS that discrimination is “as real as those clichés about his community that television and the media repeat relentlessly”: they are always portrayed as illiterate, dirty and disorganized peasants or herdsmen.

Regarding the issue of the lands, Sultanyan clarifies that “the thieves are the oligarchs, and not the Armenians, as the translation of the interview said.” And then there is also the issue of language. Although classes in Kurmanyi are offered at Yezidi children’s schools, the subject is not part of the official curriculum.

Besides, the text books are in Cyrillic when the most logical thing, Sultanyan insists, would be to use the Latin alphabet, which is the one used by the Kurds of Turkey and Syria.

In fact, the first Kurdish-language newspaper, Riya Taze (“New Road”), was founded in Armenia in 1930, but any link between this minority and a neighboring people, the Kurds, with a population much larger than that of the country, is something that Yerevan does not see with good eyes today.

“When we talk about human rights we insist that we must be alert on a daily basis. Unfortunately, many do not understand it that way. They reject being a minority because they are afraid that a special status could damage their brotherhood with the Armenians. But brotherhood cannot exist without equality,” Sultanyan resolves.

Transmigration

The Nagorno-Karabakh war of 2020 has given some visibility to the community. In that 44-day conflict that ended with an overwhelming victory for Azerbaijan, there more than twenty young Yezidis who lost their life in the ranks of the Armenian Army.

One of them was Samad Saloyan. His parents, Yuri and Nina, still live in the Zartonk, one of those villages around the Yezidi temple. The family has turned the living room into some kind of mausoleum erected to the memory of the lost son: there are photos of him as a child, or dressed as a soldier; there´s also a Yezidi flag (white and red with a sun in the center) as well as set of army medals and others from his sporting victories.

“There is nothing worse than talking about your own child in the past tense,” Yuri tells IPS. Nina has a hard time getting started until a sea of tears breaks the dam and her words overflow.

Her son was recruited at the age of 18. He was about to graduate when the war broke out, but he was finally mobilized. He survived 42 days of hell, until a bomb dropped from a drone killed him and three others.

“It was just two days before the war ended,” Nina repeats, caught up in a monologue that runs in a loop, but that always leads to a dead end: Samad is no longer in this world.

The Yezidis believe in transmigration, a chain of reincarnations that serves to purify the spirit until it becomes one with God.

But this is no comfort for the Saloyans. Only when the tears give the first truce is it possible to change the subject. Do they go to the temple? Do they keep Yezidi festivities? “Yes, more or less”. And how has the harvest been this year?

Yuri points to the lack of rain, there there is no water and that the land does not provide. Making ends meet has become a real challenge. Besides, who can assure them that another war with Azerbaijan will not break out? Armed incidents are getting increasingly recurrent along the border.

Nina raises her head and searches Yuri with her eyes. They have relatives in Russia. Most likely, she says, they will also leave.

© Inter Press Service (2022) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service

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