KOYA, Kurdistan Region – It was a meeting with the late Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou in Mahabad, the restive heartland of Kurdish anger over repressive Iranian rule, that changed radio engineer Reza Khayati’s life.
Noting Khayati’s engineering skills, which he had picked up as a conscript in the Iranian army’s electronics unit, Ghassemlou asked the young man to set up a radio station for his clandestine Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran (KDPI).
Khayati agreed to set stay six months with Ghasemlou. But that turned into 35 years, and earned him the nickname ‘mohandes,’ or engineer.
“One day Ghassemlou called me and told me that, in order to raise the morale of the Peshmarga forces we should establish a radio station. When Peshmarga forces attacked Mahabad, they seized some equipment, which I used to build a radio transmitter.
In the final days of the winter of 1979 Khayati switched on the radio. The signals were weak and covered only a small part of Kurdistan.
Then Khayati decided to establish another radio to cover most parts of the Kurdistan. In June 1980 another radio station kicked off. Bagrdan radio started its programs with a speech by Ghassemlou. The first anchor of the radio was Mustafa Hijri, the current secretary of KDPI.
In 1994, the radio was closed down by the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), and Khayati moved the station to Kirkuk. He recalls an anecdote about restarting the broadcast after a subsequent move into Kirkuk’s city center, following the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq.
“It was the evening prayer time when we started the broadcast. The signals got mixed up and by chance mosque speakers around town picked up our frequencies,” he recalls, telling the effect on the bewildered public.
“We were playing Ey Reqib (the Kurdish national anthem), which was singing out of the mosque speakers. Many people thought Kirkuk had been liberated by the Peshmarga forces,” he laughs.
Once a member of the communist Tudeh party outlawed in Iran, Khayati’s association with the KDPI has meant he has had to swallow many bitter pills of life.
Khayati’s wife was arrested on several occasions because of his activities. When she finally died, he was unable to be with her. Khayati’s children, who are doctors and engineers, have also had their share of troubles -- denied employment opportunities by the state.
Iranian authorities have several times tried to assassinate Khayati, who was born in 1934 in Khoi.
“Three attempts have been made on my life. The first time was in 1984. I was poisoned. The Doctors without Borders saved my life,” says Khayati.
After 2003, the radio broadcast stopped for several months. Then the station was moved to Koya city. Now, it broadcasts for two hours daily, including 30 minutes in Persian.
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