In Iran, Volunteer Centers Keep Kurdish Language Alive

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Despite the absence of Kurdish language classes in Iranian schools, Kurds there have kept their mother tongue alive through hundreds of centers where volunteers teach courses in reading and writing.

The Soma Center in the city of Mahabad in Iranian Kurdistan runs Kurdish cultural centers in 321 villages and 31 universities in Iran, according to its director, Raheem Soltani.

He said that Soma, whose activities reach as far as the Iranian capital of Tehran, has issued Kurdish language certificates to 13,000 participants who took its courses.

Regarding funding for these courses, Soltani said villagers pay nothing, and teachers are unpaid volunteers.

“We pay for the textbooks and all of the teachers are volunteer teachers. Participants can pay an optional subscription fee,” he explained. “However, we do not accept money from the residents of the villages.”

But working at these centers has been costly for some volunteers, who have faced arrest, while others have lost jobs or were forced to leave the country.

New York-based Human Rights Watch accuses the Iranian government of “arbitrary arrests of Kurdish critics and dissidents.” Iran’s Kurdish regions remain among the country’s poorest and most deprived.

Despite rights granted by the constitution for large minorities to study their own languages in regional schools, Persian remains the only language of instruction nationwide.

The cultural centers have stepped in over the past two decades to try and protect the Kurdish language, and save it from extinction.

Shareef Falah, an advocate who has run a number of Kurdish language courses in eastern (Iranian) Kurdistan, traces the start of Kurdish language courses to the early 1980s.

“Back then, the Kurdish language courses were run in secret, in houses, mosques, or intellectual centers, particularly in Sinna, Marivan, and Saqez,” he recalled.