During the visit of Iranian Foreign Minster Ali Akbar Salehi with his Iraqi counterpart Hoşyar Zêbarî in 5th January, the Kurdish resistance movement led by the Free Life Party of Party (PJAK) was labelled as “terrorist”. Based on this, clarification of some issues for the public opinion is required.

The Islamic Republic of Iran has adopted anti-Kurdish policies from the very outset of its formation in 1979. Holding of a simple belief on the Kurdish cause, has been enough for the regime to suppress the Kurds and to carry out large scale atrocities against our people. Over the last 31 years, the Islamic Republic has carried out various atrocious methods such as torture, executions, disappearance, cultural assimilation and it formed numerous pro-government militias to suppress our people in East Kurdistan. The applications of such oppressive methods have been still on the place against our people, and we have not been left with any option but to the legitimate self-preservation.

Consideration of the Kurdish issue from the prism of security by the Iranian state has drifted the Kurdish question away from the sphere of politics and pushed into a military zone. The Conducts of the Iranian regime in Kurdistan too well fit with the conduct of a military regime. Such a phenomenon had already been in the place prior to the emergence of our party in 2004. It has resulted in violence and hostility in Kurdistan and our nation has suffered great losses with great number of martyrs. Over the course of last few years, the Islamic Republic of Iran has taken a sharp increase in its militaristic approach with the limitless abuse of power on the hands of Revolutionary Guards Corps toward the Kurdish issue. Violence has become the main tool of the Islamic Republic and hostility toward the Kurdish people has been significantly increased.

Throughout the history of Iran, the Kurdish people have been the victim of the state terror. Within the last few years, the Islamic Republic has even established a number of terrorist groups against our people and movement. Those groups have viciously carried out terrorist activists such as disappearances and the killing of civilians. To stand against such onslaught and offensives of the Iranian regime and to defend the will and the existence of our people against such a military state, and within the framework of self-defence, East Kurdistan Defence Forces (HRK) regards deterrence of militaristic approach of Iranian state, as its legitimate right and duty. To stipulate the laws of war, HRK forces have acted sensitively and within the policies outlined by our party, they have adhered to the state of non-action in order to end the violence and to give leeway for the solution of the Kurdish issue in a peaceful and democratic way. Despite this, the Iranian military operations and the execution of political activists have been continuously carried our in Kurdistan.

Having considered the militaristic strategies of Islamic Republic against the Kurds in East Kurdistan, the accusation of the Kurdish political activists of being “terrorists”, particularly by a Kurdish politician who has achieved his post of Iraqi Foreign Minister through the long struggle of the Kurdish nation in South Kurdistan, is condemned by all the ethical and political standards. Additionally, East Kurdistan Defence forces (HRK), have never in the past used the territories of either Iran or South Kurdistan, to launch strikes on the Iranian military forces. This is while the Iranian forces have regularly shelled South Kurdistan territories and caused extensive human and economic damages to the regions; above all, the Iranian destabilising interference in Iraqi affair is well evident for every observer.

Qudis Army has carried out strings of operations in South Kurdistan which included the killing of tens of Kurdish political activists, disappearance of hundreds of human right activists, and countless of explosions in Iraq. This is a well evident fact, confirmed even by the Iraqi authorities as well as the international institutions. Interference in Iraq’s affair and to destabilise this country has been the main policy of the Iranian regime and, in no way, it is associated with a part of our work in the South Kurdistan. Nevertheless, putting the blame on the Kurdish resistance movement in the East Kurdistan for insecurity and instability in this region is wrong and misleading.

To conclude, we do condemn the statement of the Iraq Foreign Minster Hoşyar Zêbarî, against our freedom movement. We regard such statements as an attempt to bolster the Iranian influences in Iraq and South Kurdistan, which in turn, would lead to the debilitation of the Kurdish position in Iraq with negative consequences for all parts of Kurdistan. Based on this, we demand immediate rectification of such a statement and we call upon our people in South Kurdistan and the advocators of freedom and democracy in the region to deal with this issue sensitively.

 

The Council of East Kurdistan Defence Forces (HRK)
13.01.2011