COPENHAGEN, Denmark – Western countries are so focused on Iran’s nuclear program that they are neglecting other important issues such as human rights and the plight of the country’s large and suppressed Kurdish minority, said Khalid Azizi, head of the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran (KDPI).
“If the international community, in its policy regarding Iran, is only concentrating on nuclear issues, probably they will not succeed in their policy,” Azizi told Rudaw during a recent visit to Denmark.
“Please talk about democracy, human rights and that the Iranian regime should be accountable to its people. You have to focus on Kurdish rights, too,” he said, directing his comments at Western leaders.
The Iranian-Kurdish leader met with Danish Foreign Ministry officials, aiming to create support for Kurds struggling for greater rights in Iran.
After meeting with Azizi, the former Danish foreign minister, Holger K. Nielsen, pledged to maintain greater focus on the Kurdish situation in Iran.
But he stressed there is no comparison between the importance of combating Iran’s nuclear program and remaining focused on its human rights record.
“It would be extremely dangerous if Iran gets nuclear weapons, but we must maintain the criticism of Iran on human rights,” Nielsen told Rudaw.
According to Ahmet Alis, a historian from Bogazici University and an expert on Kurds, the Kurdish movement in Iran has been marginalized since a 1984 defeat by the regime. Therefore, the Western focus is often directed on the Kurds in Syria, Turkey and Iraq.
“In addition, the old Kurdish parties in Iran lack the political motivation after they ended their armed struggle in the 1990s, suffered from internal divisions and their cadres fled to the Kurdistan Region of Iraq or Europe,” Alis told Rudaw.
The Iranian Kurds lack a charismatic leader, Alis believes. The former secretary-general of the party, Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou, was assassinated in 1989, during negotiations with Iranian agents in Vienna. His successor, Said Sharafkandi, met the same fate in Berlin in 1992.
In the 1990s KDPI's cadres moved to the Kurdistan Region in Iraq, agreeing not to attack Iran from the Kurdistan Region to prevent retaliatory Iranian attacks by Iran.
Azizi said that some voices within his party are calling for the resumption of armed struggle against the Islamic regime, but that he believed political and ethnic problems should be solved through negotiations and dialogue.
“We had experienced armed struggle for many years,” he said. “It has not answered our problems. Armed struggle will only give Iran an excuse to portray us as someone who wants violence.”
The Kurds are one of the largest minorities in Iran, with an estimated eight million population, but with no legal political party inside Iran.
Azizi stressed that his party is in favor of a federal system in Iran, where all ethnicities enjoy more linguistic, cultural and regional rights.
According to Ali Rahigh-Aghsan, senior lecturer from Malmo University in Sweden, the assassination of charismatic leaders like Ghassemlou, plus international divisions among the Kurds, have worsened their role on the international stage.
The KDPI is split into two groups, one led by Azizi, and the other by Mustafa Hijri. Also, the communist Komala party has split into several branches. But negotiations are ongoing to reunify both sides of KDPI.
