The book, Nivisin u xwendina: Kurdiya kurmanci, which translates to Reading and writing: Kurdish Kurmanji, was written by four authors, Ebas Ismaeli, Mohammed Taqawi, Mehdi Jaafarzada, and Jawad Aliniya, in the dialect of Kurmanji using the Latin alphabet. It was licensed and published to teach reading and writing in the Kurdish language, stated the authors, accusing security forces of inappropriate behavior with their ban.
Provincial officials said the Latin alphabet had been used by “terrorist groups” and it was not in the benefit of the Islamic Republic of Iran to allow the publication of books written in the Latin alphabet.
Article 15 of the Iranian Constitution allows Kurdish and other spoken languages in the country to be used as languages of study, but implementation of the article has been difficult.
In the 2013 presidential election campaign, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said his government would work to gradually implement the article.
Schools were permitted to offer studies in Kurdish for the 2016-2017 school year, but curriculum still had not been adapted to the Kurdish language. Proposals submitted to education directorates by teachers in Urmia and Kirmanshah had not been approved in time to start the school year.
During the recent election campaign, Ebrahim Raisi, conservative candidate for the presidency, said that minorities had the right to their language as granted by God and the constitution. Rouhani won the vote in May by a large margin.
Referring to Raisi’s remark, the book’s authors said, “In the first stage of testing the accuracy and efficiency of this slogan, publishing a licensed book has been prohibited.”
Kurdish novels have also been subjected to censorship in Iran. Partial censorship of Sherzad Hassan’s novel The Fence and My Father’s Dogs was recently lifted years after its first publication.
