<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><rss version="2.0"
	xmlns:content="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/"
	xmlns:wfw="http://wellformedweb.org/CommentAPI/"
	xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/"
	xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"
	xmlns:sy="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/syndication/"
	xmlns:slash="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/slash/"
	xmlns:series="https://publishpress.com/"
	>

<channel>
	<title>Dr Amir Sharifi</title>
	<atom:link href="https://ikurd.net/author/dr-amir-sharifi/feed" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml" />
	<link>https://ikurd.net/author/dr-amir-sharifi</link>
	<description>Kurdistan News &#124; Truthful, Trusted, Independent</description>
	<lastBuildDate>Mon, 09 Feb 2026 11:49:46 +0000</lastBuildDate>
	<language>en-US</language>
	<sy:updatePeriod>
	hourly	</sy:updatePeriod>
	<sy:updateFrequency>
	1	</sy:updateFrequency>
	<generator>https://wordpress.org/?v=7.0</generator>

<image>
	<url>https://ikurd.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/cropped-ikurdlogoicon1-32x32.jpg</url>
	<title>Dr Amir Sharifi</title>
	<link>https://ikurd.net/author/dr-amir-sharifi</link>
	<width>32</width>
	<height>32</height>
</image> 
	<item>
		<title>Open letter calls for global solidarity in support of Syrian Kurdish forces</title>
		<link>https://ikurd.net/open-letter-calls-global-2026-01-11</link>
		
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Dr. Amir Sharifi]]></dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Sun, 11 Jan 2026 05:00:48 +0000</pubDate>
				<category><![CDATA[Kurdistan]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Exclusive]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Syria]]></category>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">https://ikurd.net/?p=139241</guid>

					<description><![CDATA[<p>Dr. Amir Sharifi &#124; Exclusive to iKurd.net Open Letter : Call for International Solidarity to uphold, support Kurdish Democratic Syrian (SDF) forces against Jihadist forces in Syria Date: January 10, 2026 The Kurds of Southern California expressed and continue to affirm their support for peaceful co-existence in Aleppo Sheikh Masoud and Ashrafieh neighbourhoods that were [&#8230;]</p>
<p>The post <a href="https://ikurd.net/open-letter-calls-global-2026-01-11">Open letter calls for global solidarity in support of Syrian Kurdish forces</a> appeared first on <a href="https://ikurd.net">iKurd News</a>.</p>
]]></description>
										<content:encoded><![CDATA[<figure id="attachment_139256" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-139256" style="width: 450px" class="wp-caption alignright"><img fetchpriority="high" decoding="async" class="size-full wp-image-139256" src="https://ikurd.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/Kurdish-female-YPJ-YPG-SDF-security-member-Syria-Rojava-Reuters.jpg" alt="Open letter calls for global solidarity in support of Syrian Kurds" width="450" height="360" srcset="https://ikurd.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/Kurdish-female-YPJ-YPG-SDF-security-member-Syria-Rojava-Reuters.jpg 450w, https://ikurd.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/Kurdish-female-YPJ-YPG-SDF-security-member-Syria-Rojava-Reuters-300x240.jpg 300w" sizes="(max-width: 450px) 100vw, 450px" /><figcaption id="caption-attachment-139256" class="wp-caption-text">A Kurdish female YPJ/YPG/SDF security members guard a demonstration against attacks by Syrian government Islamist militias on Kurdish neighborhoods in Aleppo, in Qamishlo, Syrian Kurdistan (Rojava), January 2026. Photo: Reuters</figcaption></figure>
<p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><strong>Dr. Amir Sharifi | Exclusive to iKurd.net</strong></span></p>
<p style="text-align: left;"><strong>Open Letter : Call for International Solidarity to uphold, support Kurdish Democratic Syrian (SDF) forces against Jihadist forces in Syria</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: left;">Date: January 10, 2026</p>
<p style="text-align: left;">The Kurds of Southern California expressed and continue to affirm their support for peaceful co-existence in Aleppo Sheikh Masoud and Ashrafieh neighbourhoods that were under ferocious <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong><a href="https://ikurd.net/syria-bombs-kurdish-neighbourhoods-2026-01-08">attacks</a></strong></span> by Turkish supported Jihadists. We urge congress and U.N in the following letter to halt, uphold, and enforce a lasting peace in Aleppo and Northeast Syria.</p>
<p style="text-align: left;">Contrary to the U.N charter and humanitarian principles , several civilians including children and women were massacred ; many others were wounded. 140,000 Kurdish civilians had been <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="color: #333333;"><a style="color: #333333; text-decoration: underline;" href="https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/syrian-army-orders-evacuations-heavy-fighting-grips-aleppos-kurdish-areas-2026-01-08/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">displaced</a></span></span>, and a great many remain under curfew and constant savagery of artillery fire.</p>
<p style="text-align: left;">The anguish of the Kurdish residents was immense as they faced mutilation, humiliation, ethnic cleansing ,and macabre murders of Jihadists. Haunting past continues to traumatize civilians and those facing forced migration and those of us who watched unfolding tragedies from a far. As you are aware no tangible treaties or norms to protect minorities have been approved officially in Syria to protect the minority populations from persecution and other denials of basic human rights.</p>
<figure id="attachment_139107" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-139107" style="width: 450px" class="wp-caption alignright"><img decoding="async" class="size-full wp-image-139107" src="https://ikurd.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/Thousands-Kurds-flee-Sheikh-Maqsud-Ashrafiyeh-Syria-Aleppo-Jan-7-2025-afp.jpg" alt="" width="450" height="360" srcset="https://ikurd.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/Thousands-Kurds-flee-Sheikh-Maqsud-Ashrafiyeh-Syria-Aleppo-Jan-7-2025-afp.jpg 450w, https://ikurd.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/Thousands-Kurds-flee-Sheikh-Maqsud-Ashrafiyeh-Syria-Aleppo-Jan-7-2025-afp-300x240.jpg 300w" sizes="(max-width: 450px) 100vw, 450px" /><figcaption id="caption-attachment-139107" class="wp-caption-text">Thousands of Kurds flee the Sheikh Maqsud and Ashrafiyeh neighborhoods in Aleppo, Syria, after Syrian government–aligned Islamist militias attack the area and designate it a closed military zone, January 7, 2026. Photo: AFP</figcaption></figure>
<p style="text-align: left;">Many of us still remember September of 2014 when ISIS launched its monstrous strikes against the city of <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong><a href="https://ikurd.net/kobani-symbol-of-unbeaten-resistances-the-emblem-of-unities-and-anathemas-of-turkish-president-recep-tayyip-erdogan-2014-11-17">Kobani</a></strong></span> after committing a genocide against Yazidis in Northern Iraq. The world saw how the Kurdish resistance against ISIS siege of Kobani was legendary particularly by women fighters. As the world conscience grappled with the existence of this new threat, the Kurds fought it courageously.</p>
<p style="text-align: left;">Thus far Kurds in Rojava have lost 15,000 lives to liberate themselves and promote peace and stability in their region and Syria. The Western world led by the U.S played an active role in forming and training Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and thus fostering a mutual partnership highly praised by Westerners. As you are aware, unfortunately, the conflict threatens to be exacerbated by Turkey.</p>
<p style="text-align: left;">SDF for the past 14 years has laid the foundation of an inclusive democracy for all ethnicities and religions in Northeast Syria. Such an open democracy is still in grave danger. a democracy that that has been repeatedly reaffirmed by popular support from millions of protesters from major cities in Syria, Southeast Turkey, Europe, and the U.S.</p>
<p style="text-align: left;" align="justify">We call on U.S and U.N</p>
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>To denounce the Syrian Jihadist war against Kurdish neighbourhoods in Aleppo and Northeast Syria.</li>
<li>To lend their support to the Kurds not just as a political debt but as a moral imperative to serve social justice for all minorities in Syria.</li>
<li>To honour and protect the Kurdish population from persecutions, displacements, and conflicts imposed on them by the Jihadist forces.</li>
</ul>
<p style="text-align: left;">Signed</p>
<p style="text-align: left;">Sincerely Yours<br />
Dr. Amir Sharifi</p>
<p style="text-align: left;"><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong><a href="https://ikurd.net/author/dr-amir-sharifi">Dr Amir Sharifi</a></strong></span>, a lecturer at California State University, Department of Linguistics, Long Beach, and Co-Director of the Kurdish Human Rights Advocacy Group ( KHRAG), Los Angeles.</em></p>
<p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><em>The opinions are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent the views of iKurd.net or its editors.</em></span></p>
<p style="text-align: left;">Copyright © 2026 iKurd.net. All rights reserved</p>
<p>The post <a href="https://ikurd.net/open-letter-calls-global-2026-01-11">Open letter calls for global solidarity in support of Syrian Kurdish forces</a> appeared first on <a href="https://ikurd.net">iKurd News</a>.</p>
]]></content:encoded>
					
		
		
			</item>
		<item>
		<title>Malekshahi massacre and Iran’s brutal record of ethnic repression</title>
		<link>https://ikurd.net/malekshahi-massacre-irans-2026-01-06</link>
		
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Dr. Amir Sharifi]]></dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Tue, 06 Jan 2026 05:00:59 +0000</pubDate>
				<category><![CDATA[Exclusive]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Kurdistan]]></category>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">https://ikurd.net/?p=139040</guid>

					<description><![CDATA[<p>After Massacre in Malekshahi Country and the Case of Brutal History of Ethnic Repression in Iran Dr. Amir Sharifi &#124; Exclusive to iKurd.net Following protests in most cities that began a week ago in bazar against the rising inflation and worsening socio-economic conditions, various cities and provinces including Tehran, Fars, Hamadan, and Lorestan, Kermanshah, and [&#8230;]</p>
<p>The post <a href="https://ikurd.net/malekshahi-massacre-irans-2026-01-06">Malekshahi massacre and Iran’s brutal record of ethnic repression</a> appeared first on <a href="https://ikurd.net">iKurd News</a>.</p>
]]></description>
										<content:encoded><![CDATA[<figure id="attachment_139044" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-139044" style="width: 450px" class="wp-caption alignright"><img decoding="async" class="size-full wp-image-139044" src="https://ikurd.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/Iran-forces-kill-Kurdish-protesters-Malekshahi-Iranian-Kurdistan-Rojhelat-Jan-2025-video-sm.jpg" alt="Malekshahi massacre and Iran’s brutal record of ethnic repression" width="450" height="360" srcset="https://ikurd.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/Iran-forces-kill-Kurdish-protesters-Malekshahi-Iranian-Kurdistan-Rojhelat-Jan-2025-video-sm.jpg 450w, https://ikurd.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/Iran-forces-kill-Kurdish-protesters-Malekshahi-Iranian-Kurdistan-Rojhelat-Jan-2025-video-sm-300x240.jpg 300w" sizes="(max-width: 450px) 100vw, 450px" /><figcaption id="caption-attachment-139044" class="wp-caption-text">Body of Kurdish protesters killed by Iranian security forces in Malekshahi in Ilam province, Iranian Kurdistan (Rojhelat), January 2025. Photo: video/sm/via iKurd.net</figcaption></figure>
<p><strong>After Massacre in Malekshahi Country and the Case of Brutal History of Ethnic Repression in Iran</strong></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><strong>Dr. Amir Sharifi | Exclusive to iKurd.net</strong></span></p>
<p style="text-align: left;">Following protests in most cities that began a week ago in bazar against the rising inflation and worsening socio-economic conditions, various cities and provinces including Tehran, Fars, Hamadan, and Lorestan, Kermanshah, and Ilam rose up in peaceful dissent against the destruction that the regime has created throughout the country, particularly in the richest and yet the most impoverished areas in Kermanshah and Ilam.</p>
<p style="text-align: left;">Despite the regime’s desperate attempts to quell the discontent, the furious protesters call for the fall of the corrupt regime that has brought the country to the brink of destruction and incessant wars. Thus far more than 50 have been killed during protests in the anti-government demonstrations.</p>
<p style="text-align: left;">According to human rights posts the <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="color: #333333;"><a style="color: #333333; text-decoration: underline;" href="https://kurdistanhumanrights.org/en/news/killing-civilians/2026/01/04/updated-three-killed-over-30-injured-in-irgc-attack-on-protesters-in-malekshahi" target="_blank" rel="noopener">massacre in Malekshahai</a></span></span>, Ilam occurred on Saturday 3, 2026 when a member of IRGC ( Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps ) opened fire through a gate at the demonstrators and another from a rooftop shot to kill the unarmed demonstrators.</p>
<p style="text-align: left;">Although precise figures are not available ,several protesters have been killed, and more than 40 have reportedly been injured according to Hengaw Organization for Human Rights 1a. Kurdistan Human Rights Network has mentioned “ Reza Azimzadeh, Latif Karimi, and Mehdi Emamipour…2 were killed in the debacle. However, it puts the numbers of the injured at 30. This vicious and deliberate attack followed Khamenei’s speech calling protesters “rioters” and “enemies” “who must be put in their place.3 hundreds of people have been arrested and held incommunicado.</p>
<p style="text-align: left;">The region has been militarized even more . Ilam as a province has been under threat for years . <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="color: #333333;"><a style="color: #333333; text-decoration: underline;" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malekshahi_County" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Malekshahi</a></span></span> rose up in protest of Zagros Mountain fires and excessive use of water and its subsequent scarcity; the residents of the area were fired on by repressive security forces in 2018, 2021, 2022 during Jina Amini’s movement, and now again 2026.</p>
<p style="text-align: left;">Ilam has not only been economically impoverished, but the lands have been reclassified and rezoned for political reasons and forms of Ilamite livelihood have been taken away from them. The deplorable condition of residents has received little or no international coverage or internal support.</p>
<p style="text-align: left;">The expected vitriolic narratives and campaigns against protesters will continue. An example cited by Latif Karimi, a Kurdish man and retired brigadier general, was shot dead by Iranian government forces while among demonstrators. In the aftermath, state institutions moved quickly to twist the story, portraying him as a member of government forces allegedly killed by protesters.</p>
<p style="text-align: left;">However, his son has publicly rejected this claim, stating that his father was killed directly by government forces.” His son Emad Karimi, in a message on Instagram has said that his father was shot by security forces : “My father’s only ‘crime’ was telling them not to shoot at the people.”.1b</p>
<figure id="attachment_139048" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-139048" style="width: 450px" class="wp-caption alignright"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-full wp-image-139048" src="https://ikurd.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/Kurdish-protesters-Malekshahi-Ilam-Iranian-Kurdistan-Rojhelat-Jan-2025-ikurd-net-video-sm.jpg" alt="" width="450" height="360" srcset="https://ikurd.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/Kurdish-protesters-Malekshahi-Ilam-Iranian-Kurdistan-Rojhelat-Jan-2025-ikurd-net-video-sm.jpg 450w, https://ikurd.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/Kurdish-protesters-Malekshahi-Ilam-Iranian-Kurdistan-Rojhelat-Jan-2025-ikurd-net-video-sm-300x240.jpg 300w" sizes="(max-width: 450px) 100vw, 450px" /><figcaption id="caption-attachment-139048" class="wp-caption-text">Kurdish anti-government protests in Malekshahi, Ilam Province, Iranian Kurdistan (Rojhelat), January 2025. Photo: Video/sm via iKurd.net</figcaption></figure>
<p style="text-align: left;">Another video published after the massacre in Malekshahai shows many repressive forces raid a local hospital on January 4, 2026, firing shots to frighten away the visitors in preparation to abduct the dead and the wounded , a crime committed as it is customary by the Islamic Republic of Iran.</p>
<p style="text-align: left;">One of the videos that has repeatedly emerged in social media and networks to inspire many is how thousands of demonstrators that have gathered to bury and commemorate those killed the day before at a local cemetery, re-echo the battle cry “Death to Khamenei!” and “Death to the Islamic Republic of Iran!”.</p>
<p style="text-align: left;">For Kurds and other groups throughout successive regimes , it is abundantly clear that human rights have no place in Iran, particularly for ethnic and religious populations.</p>
<p style="text-align: left;">Brutality is ubiquitous and the general population is subjected to multiple forms of violence ranging from crippling economy, political imprisonment without fair trial, summary arrests, torture, violations of internationally recognized human rights, lack of control by citizens over their lives, lack of cultural and linguistic freedom, further marginalization of women, executions under various pretexts, poverty, environmental and climatic devastation and other forms of abuse, all giving rise the movement of “woman, life, freedom” in Sept 2022.</p>
<p style="text-align: left;">The regional and international momentum of this movement brought the regime to its knees. The movement led by women, despite its socio-political and cultural dramatic and transformative impacts, was brutally repressed. Nevertheless, resistance to state terrorism and imposition of mandatory veiling and other forms of oppression and exclusion have persisted.</p>
<p style="text-align: left;">The UN special rapporteur on human rights, Mai Sato 4 in an x posting has said that &#8220;reports indicate growing confrontation between protesters and security forces&#8221; and warned the violent response witnessed during the 2022-2023 movement &#8220;must not be repeated&#8221;.</p>
<p style="text-align: left;">However, the authoritarian regime is repeating and standing in defiance to all humanitarian and human rights principles . Human rights organizations have reported that approximately 1500 had been executed in Iran, representing a surge in the past 30-year record of flagrant violations of human rights. As expected, executions among the Kurds proportionally constitute a large percentage.</p>
<p style="text-align: left;">Ilam like other Kurdish areas in Eastern Kurdistan (Rojhelat) has been subject to direct or structural persecution and denial of identity and hence the protest has been concentrated in these areas, aspiring to reach the dimensions and scale of <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong><a href="https://ikurd.net/remembering-jina-mahsa-amini-2023-09-17">Jina Amini</a></strong></span>’s movement, the most significant and widespread challenge to the survival of the Islamic Republic of Iran and its apartheid gender system.</p>
<p style="text-align: left;">The fact of the matter is the residents of Ilam like the city of Kermanshah have been subjected to excessive militarization and brute repression more notably during uprisings; this repression is symbolically remembered in the mourning ceremony held at the local cemetery for two brothers: Rasoul and Reza kadouriyan who were killed to curb the recent popular protests in Kermanshan and throughout Iran.</p>
<p style="text-align: left;">The video shows a funeral ritual in which women scratch their faces and beat their chests and men their heads in bereavement to the solemn rhythm of drums and Kurdish flute as a eulogy is recited in tribute to honour the memory of the slain young brothers laid to rest in the city cemetery amid intensified militarization by the security forces.</p>
<p style="text-align: left;">The regime has widened inequality and intensified repression throughout Iran under the corrupt theocratic dictatorship that has crossed all boundaries when it comes to human rights abuses. However, the case of ethnic and religious minorities shows the depth of the discourse of domination in the regime’s policies against their very existence .</p>
<p style="text-align: left;">Malekshahi is an example of this brutal massacre and the official exclusionary ideology. However, despite the need for regional and international solidarity, a discordant dissent throughout Iran remains vibrant and promising as protesters call for a complete regime change and social justice.</p>
<p style="text-align: left;">The Islamic Republic like its predecessor, under the guise of cultural diversity, has pursued a coercive and assimilationist policy towards Kurds and other ethnic and religious groups; the Kurdish people sacrifice themselves to both oust the Islamic Republic of Iran and to seek a genuine alliance of democratic forces to recognize and legitimize their denied dignity and distinct identity.</p>
<p style="text-align: left;">Only through such a defensible process, real progress can be made. The democratic forces should act now. A new ideological realignment is required to recognize the pluralistic rights of different groups rather than paying lip service to intrinsic rights and fear of division rather than embracing diversity. It is indeed “violence not democracy that erodes human collective rights” 5</p>
<p><span style="font-size: 8pt;">Sources</span><br />
<span style="font-size: 8pt;">1-1a and 1 b -Hengaw Organization for Human Rights ( Jan 4, 2026) Latif Karimi shot dead in Ilam: authorities seek to distort reality. https://hengaw.net/em/news/2026/01/article-31 | <a href="https://hengaw.net/en" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="color: #333333; text-decoration: underline;">https://hengaw.net/en</span></span></a></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 8pt;">2-Kurdistan Human Rights Network( Jn 4, 2026) Three killed , over 30 injured in IRGC attack on protesters in Malekshahai,</span><br />
<span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="color: #333333;"><a style="color: #333333;" href="https://kurdistanhumanrights.org/en/" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><span style="font-size: 8pt;">https://kurdistanhumanrights.org/en/</span></a></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 8pt;">3-Al Jazeera News ( 2025, Jan 3) Iran’s Khamenei says rioters ‘must be put in their places’ amid protests.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: 8pt;">https://www.aljazeera.com/</span><br />
<span style="font-size: 8pt;">4-Sato, Mai (@drmaisato ) (2026, Jan 2).Day Six of Demonstrations across Iran: X 2 Jan . 2026 //x.com/ drmaisato</span><br />
<span style="font-size: 8pt;">5-Thompson, R. H. (1997). Ethnic minorities and the case for collective rights. American anthropologist, 99(4), 786-798.</span></p>
<p style="text-align: left;"><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong><a href="https://ikurd.net/author/dr-amir-sharifi">Dr Amir Sharifi</a></strong></span>, a lecturer at California State University, Department of Linguistics, Long Beach.</em></p>
<p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><em>The opinions are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent the views of iKurd.net or its editors.</em></span></p>
<p style="text-align: left;">Copyright © 2026 iKurd.net. All rights reserved</p>
<p>The post <a href="https://ikurd.net/malekshahi-massacre-irans-2026-01-06">Malekshahi massacre and Iran’s brutal record of ethnic repression</a> appeared first on <a href="https://ikurd.net">iKurd News</a>.</p>
]]></content:encoded>
					
		
		
			</item>
		<item>
		<title>&#8220;Angels of Sinjar&#8221;: Film Screening Review with Q+A</title>
		<link>https://ikurd.net/angels-sinjar-film-2025-09-15</link>
		
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Dr. Amir Sharifi]]></dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Mon, 15 Sep 2025 08:00:48 +0000</pubDate>
				<category><![CDATA[Yazidis]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Cinema]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Exclusive]]></category>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">https://ikurd.net/?p=135666</guid>

					<description><![CDATA[<p>Dr. Amir Sharifi &#124; Exclusive to iKurd.net Womensvoicesnow.org will be screening “Angles of Sinjar” on September 21, 2025 at 1:00 PM in Los Angeles at Renberg Theater. Directed by Academy- and Emmy-Award nominee Hanna Polak, Angels of Sinjar is more than just a film; it&#8217;s a testament to the unbreakable human spirit. When a solemn promise to a [&#8230;]</p>
<p>The post <a href="https://ikurd.net/angels-sinjar-film-2025-09-15">&#8220;Angels of Sinjar&#8221;: Film Screening Review with Q+A</a> appeared first on <a href="https://ikurd.net">iKurd News</a>.</p>
]]></description>
										<content:encoded><![CDATA[<figure id="attachment_135673" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-135673" style="width: 450px" class="wp-caption alignright"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-full wp-image-135673" src="https://ikurd.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Film-Angles-of-Sinjar-Yazidis-2025-iKurd-net-YT-screengrab.jpg" alt="Angels of Sinjar: Film Screening Review with Q+A" width="450" height="360" srcset="https://ikurd.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Film-Angles-of-Sinjar-Yazidis-2025-iKurd-net-YT-screengrab.jpg 450w, https://ikurd.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Film-Angles-of-Sinjar-Yazidis-2025-iKurd-net-YT-screengrab-300x240.jpg 300w" sizes="(max-width: 450px) 100vw, 450px" /><figcaption id="caption-attachment-135673" class="wp-caption-text">Film &#8216;Angles of Sinjar&#8221; directed by Academy- and Emmy-Award nominee Hanna Polak. Photo: iKurd.net/screengrab/yt</figcaption></figure>
<p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><strong>Dr. Amir Sharifi | Exclusive to iKurd.net</strong></span></p>
<p style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://www.womensvoicesnow.org/angels-of-sinjar" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="color: #333333; text-decoration: underline;">Womensvoicesnow.org</span></span></a> will be screening “Angles of Sinjar” on September 21, 2025 at 1:00 PM in Los Angeles at Renberg Theater.</p>
<p style="text-align: left;">Directed by Academy- and Emmy-Award nominee Hanna Polak, <em>Angels of Sinjar</em> is more than just a film; it&#8217;s a testament to the unbreakable human spirit. When a solemn promise to a dying father becomes an impossible mission to rescue five sisters from ISIS enslavement, one woman&#8217;s journey exposes a forgotten genocide. The film is a call to action, a testament to what happens when ordinary people do extraordinary things, and proof that even in humanity&#8217;s darkest moments, love and courage can light the way forward.</p>
<p style="text-align: left;"><em>Hanna will be joining us in-person from Poland and will be in conversation with Maha, Awad, Arab American TV Host, Creative Producer, and Voice Actor, and Dr. Amir Sharifi from California State University.</em></p>
<p style="text-align: left;"><strong>3rd Annual Leslie J. Sacks Grand Prize Film Screening and Q&amp;A</strong>, the culminating event of the annual Women&#8217;s Voices Now Film Festival.</p>
<p style="text-align: left;">&#8220;Women&#8217;s fight for equal rights is essentially a humanist and peaceful struggle for true democracy, and a higher form of civilization.&#8221; &#8211; Leyla Zana</p>
<p style="text-align: left;"><b>Film Review: Angles of Sinjar </b></p>
<p style="text-align: left;" align="justify">Many revealing films have been made about the trauma and genocidal campaigns to which Yazidis have been subjected. These movies whether feature or documentary converge on themes of invoking narratives of lived experiences of the victims and survivors who have experienced and fought the ferocity and savagery of genocide.</p>
<figure id="attachment_135687" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-135687" style="width: 450px" class="wp-caption alignright"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-full wp-image-135687" src="https://ikurd.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Film-Angles-of-Sinjar-Yazidis-LA-CA-2025.jpg" alt="Angels of Sinjar: Film Screening Review with Q+A" width="450" height="360" srcset="https://ikurd.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Film-Angles-of-Sinjar-Yazidis-LA-CA-2025.jpg 450w, https://ikurd.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Film-Angles-of-Sinjar-Yazidis-LA-CA-2025-300x240.jpg 300w" sizes="(max-width: 450px) 100vw, 450px" /><figcaption id="caption-attachment-135687" class="wp-caption-text">Womensvoicesnow.org will be screening “Angles of Sinjar” on September 21, 2025 at 1:00 PM in Los Angeles at Renberg Theater.</figcaption></figure>
<p style="text-align: left;" align="justify">However, <em>Angles of Sinjar</em>, made by the Polish director, Hannah Polak and shown is superbly and effectively shot to give us an insight into the collective memory and ethno-religious identity of a Yazidi young woman, Hanifa and her untiring search for her five sisters abducted by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in 2014. Polak’s film uncovers the multilayered discourses as it plays an active and engaging role both in the community’s visibility and intervention to foster decisive and concerted action in countering genocide.</p>
<p style="text-align: left;" align="justify">Genocide films approach the subject from multiple perspectives, In a film such as Mediha (2023) a young girl a survivor uses an armature camera to capture the lived experiences of her family members and as the search for her missing family members across Iraq, Turky, and Syria continues.</p>
<p style="text-align: left;" align="justify">On Her Shoulder (2018) documents the afflictions of Nadia Murad, an iconic figure in the fight against Genocide. 10 Years of Darkness: ISIS and the Yazidis (2025) casts light on the genocidal war in 2024 and its consequences and what survivors reveal during interviews and what global actions should be taken. If the Dead Come Home( 2024) depicts the starkly tragic lives of survivors in search of their lost ones in mass graves and how finding a loved one is helpful in healing the survivors. Defenceless People : The Yazidis and their lives after the genocide (2025) is the story of four siblings and their diasporic life in Germany as they attempt to build a new life.</p>
<div style="float: right; margin: 10px; text-align: center; width: 450px;"><iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/4Z0hq4jkmTU" width="450" height="253" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"><br />
</iframe></p>
<div style="font-size: 14px; color: #555; margin-top: 5px;">Angels of Sinjar</div>
</div>
<p style="text-align: left;" align="justify">A fundamental difference between <em>Angels of Sinjar</em> and other films is in the collective interlacing effort of multilayered narratives to bring injustice and historical genocide to the attention of audiences at large rather than relying on the plight and struggle of one character to show the depth of the genocide . Another significant message of this film is that genocides, torture, mass execution, or sexual violence will never end easily without intervention otherwise afflictions persist across time and space for generations unless perpetrators are brought to justice.</p>
<p style="text-align: left;" align="justify">The director, Hannah Polak sets in motion not only the frightening revelation but captures the mystical and yet gloomy landscape of Mount Sinjar, the sacred site where the core beliefs and practices of Yazidis is conveyed in a voice-over. This mountain is the site of genocide where hundreds of thousands of people fled and took sanctuary as many died of heat, hunger, and disability in 2014.</p>
<p style="text-align: left;" align="justify">In a subsequent scene Hanifa, the protagonist is shown mourning on her father’s grave; the father suffered a heart attack after hearing about the tragic fate of his kidnapped daughters, particularly when one of them gang raped called from a hospital in Syria.</p>
<p style="text-align: left;" align="justify">It is here that viewers find out a Kurdish fighter, Hamood, helping Hanifa rescue her remaining three kidnapped sisters. Soon after viewers are then taken to the city of Sinjar which had a population of 90000 before the genocide ; after the vicious attack, it is now looted, destroyed, abandoned, many inhabitants executed, women and girls abducted and forced into sex slaves, topics to which the film returns.</p>
<p style="text-align: left;" align="justify">The entire area including Kocho, a village about 28 Km form the city of Sinjar with a population of 2000 residents now looks like a ghost town. Saeed, the brother of Nadia Murad, the recipient of 2018 Nobel Peace Prize, reenacts where he and other men were taken to be executed. He recalls “ They shouted “Allahu Akbar” and opened fire. I could feel the bullets when they hit me.</p>
<p style="text-align: left;" align="justify">One bullet hit here (showing the side of his left knee) a second one the knee, another one here ( along the abdomen ) another bullet above it. I was hit five bullets. I got the sixth bullet …whoever was still moving, was finished off with a shot to the head. The shooter approached me and shot me right here (showing the back of his head ) You can still my scars.</p>
<p style="text-align: left;" align="justify">He thought he’d killed me. …When they left, I crawled out. I looked around and there were about fifty men dead. I crawled to that house. When I was inside, I could see ISIS bulldozers burying the bodies. Saeed painfully shows photographs of his six brothers and his slain mother posted on a wall among many others. These segments of “monologue” find immediate reverberations in the minds of the audience.</p>
<p style="text-align: left;" align="justify">In another intercut footage, Hanifa also in a car nostalgically remembers happy times she had spent with her family; now with horror, she relives and enacts the arrival of DAESH on Til Ezer Far, relating the story of her escape and where men were massacred and women and girls including her sisters were seized and abducted. The magnitude of the mass violence and the fact that Yazidis are still living under the harsh and deplorable conditions is shown in a sprawling tent city of refugees and Hanifa with resilience distributes candies to alleviate the afflictions of surviving children.</p>
<p style="text-align: left;" align="justify">A turning point in narratives occurs in an intertwined footage when the film director takes Saeed and Hanifa to Krakow, Poland where Hanifa and Saeed in painful recollection, recall and relate the haunting memories of mass killings and kidnappings of ISIS to a UN conference on genocide.</p>
<p style="text-align: left;" align="justify">Culminating in Nadi Murad’s impassioned speech in Oslo City Hall, Norway, upon receiving the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize for all her efforts on the part of the Yazidis to end sexual violence and calling for accountability of perpetrators; she addressed the audience as a survivor for all Yazidis and their ancient culture and religion; her speech brought tears to the eyes of many when she spoke of how ISIS ferociously murdered six of her brothers and captured one ; she also took the audience to places where the genocide took place as she yearned for the lost home. Her discourse not only re-echoes her brother’s lamenting account, but brings together memories and episodes of diverse global communities to prevent such tragedies.</p>
<p style="text-align: left;" align="justify">The film’s narrative resumed in diaspora, a fragmented and dispersed community where Hanifa’s family is still traumatized in Germany. Hanifa has rescued her seven year old and 17-year-old sisters. Another episode before Hanifa returns to Kurdish Region in Northern Iraq to look for her remaining sisters, depicts the simple joy and yet predicaments of life in diaspora.</p>
<p style="text-align: left;" align="justify">The simple joy of unwrapping gifts reminds the mother of the tragic loss of her husband which she reenacts vividly “I saw Wadha put her doll in our bag. After the girls were captured, their father kept the doll’s hat in his pocket He kept it there till the day he died.</p>
<p style="text-align: left;" align="justify">He would not let any one touch it. He held it and cried and would not let anyone near that hat; it was her sister’s toy. He was tormented by the fate of his daughters. I’ll never forget it. He died from shock and a broken heart.” This fleeting moment of joy and play is intercut with agony as the mother tearfully cries out “that is why, I don’t want to see any dolls or toys.”</p>
<figure id="attachment_127115" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-127115" style="width: 450px" class="wp-caption alignright"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-full wp-image-127115" src="https://ikurd.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Islamic-State-killing-Yazidis-Sinjar-Iraq-2014-isis-video-sm.jpg" alt="Angels of Sinjar: Film Screening Review with Q+A" width="450" height="360" srcset="https://ikurd.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Islamic-State-killing-Yazidis-Sinjar-Iraq-2014-isis-video-sm.jpg 450w, https://ikurd.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Islamic-State-killing-Yazidis-Sinjar-Iraq-2014-isis-video-sm-300x240.jpg 300w" sizes="(max-width: 450px) 100vw, 450px" /><figcaption id="caption-attachment-127115" class="wp-caption-text">Islamic State militants killing Yazidi men, Sinjar, northwest Iraq, 2014. Photo: ISIS media/video/sm/iKurd.net</figcaption></figure>
<p style="text-align: left;" align="justify">The film clearly shows Hanifa and her own probing and testimony gathering methods, her youngest sister’s account when she was seven, is haunting “We were told to become Muslims and { they said, we} won’t harm you. An]{if you} practice our religion. They took us to the swings to stop us from crying …they said if you become Muslims, we will take you back to your mothers They lied as they took all women to Syria. The ISIS women kept saying the forbidden word to us {Satan}. They used the word to refer to us. And they kept humiliating us. None of the children’s parents were with them They were two or three years old; they urinated on us and cried all night …a woman came and read the Qur’an to us and told us to repeat after her ..if we did not ; they’d make us get “married” There were pieces of glass from a broken window. Two my friends and I cut our wrists, but nothing happened They took us to the doctor right away…then they took us to a large room; each one in a room. She hesitates to continue as the sister urges her on. Moments of pause and her wondering eyes “Hanifa, that’s enough and I cannot do it anymore.” Both embrace in shame.</p>
<p style="text-align: left;" align="justify">Yet another horrific footage is the testimony given by Haifa’s older sister “ … I thought I would be able to escape, but nobody could escape them . Before this, the men would examine the girls. They dressed you in hijab, and women’s clothing and examined us to see if we were virgins or not . They gathered us together and based on our looks = they created a lottery. They drew lots as to who would win: younger or older, shorter or taller, pretty or plain, with eyes a certain color. They did not leave anything out We smudged our faces with ash to not look attractive, but nothing helped; we were scared to death. I tried to electrocute myself in the bathroom by pulling electrical plugs from their sockets in the shower. I thought this would kill me but I only fainted. … My nine-year-old sister, who is now eleven, and still captive tried to hide behind me. They pulled her hair to take her away. In the end they got her even though I begged them to leave her alone. She was screaming as they dragged her away . Both the older sister sitting next to the sobbing mother hid her faces in her hair, both hid their tears from the gaze of the audience.</p>
<p style="text-align: left;" align="justify">With help from Hamood, Hanifa reembarks on a dangerous and daring and daunting search to find through intermediaries her sisters ( the pictures of two of whom she has). Viewers find out the youngest one called her “mother” because she had taken care of her. “ I love her more than I love myself.”</p>
<p style="text-align: left;" align="justify">This is where we have a convergence of discourses : a young Yazidi girl and her longing for peace and justice is also present in Hanifa’s quest and Yazidi women’s lamenting rhythmic clad in black, chest beating in a monumental representation of a history of mourning against genocide of all ages.</p>
<p style="text-align: left;" align="justify">The film becomes more articulate and more collective once Hanifa’s voice joins Nadia’s and other women who are struggling to set free more than 3000 women who remain in captivity of ISIS. <em>Angels of Sinjar</em> is empowering in this sense rather than simply being a compassionate and persistent portrayal of Hanifa, it is indeed collective and collaborative effort through the focused presence, courage, and strength of women like Hanifa to tell the harrowing stories of genocide under the gaze of cameras.</p>
<p style="text-align: left;" align="justify">The final scene occurs through framing as after a long delay and unexpected challenges faced by Hanifa and Hamood, Hanifa succeeds in rescuing one of her sisters from the captivity of ISIS. The final sequence in a car amid crowds in the dusty alleys shows Hanifa’s emotional outpouring, gracious generosity, the ubiquitous happiness, the boundless love for her sisters and her sister’s embrace. This final scene constitutes an unforgettable and unrepeatable dramatic imagery in the face of terrorism, torture, and genocides of all types against humanity .</p>
<p style="text-align: left;"><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong><a href="https://ikurd.net/author/dr-amir-sharifi">Dr Amir Sharifi</a></strong></span>, a lecturer at California State University, Department of Linguistics, Long Beach.</em></p>
<p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><em>The opinions are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent the views of iKurd.net or its editors.</em></span></p>
<p style="text-align: left;">Copyright © 2025 iKurd.net. All rights reserved</p>
<p>The post <a href="https://ikurd.net/angels-sinjar-film-2025-09-15">&#8220;Angels of Sinjar&#8221;: Film Screening Review with Q+A</a> appeared first on <a href="https://ikurd.net">iKurd News</a>.</p>
]]></content:encoded>
					
		
		
			</item>
		<item>
		<title>A New Ecosystem in Zagros Mountains and Fatal Fires of the Islamic Republic of Iran</title>
		<link>https://ikurd.net/new-ecosystem-zagros-mountains-2025-08-07</link>
		
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Dr. Amir Sharifi]]></dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Thu, 07 Aug 2025 07:00:33 +0000</pubDate>
				<category><![CDATA[Kurdistan]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Exclusive]]></category>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">https://ikurd.net/?p=134812</guid>

					<description><![CDATA[<p>Dr. Amir Sharifi &#124; Exclusive to iKurd.net How aptly Edward Abbey in Desert Solitaire has said “The love of wilderness is more than a hunger for what is always beyond reach; it is also an expression of loyalty to the earth, the earth which bore us and sustains us, the only paradise we shall ever [&#8230;]</p>
<p>The post <a href="https://ikurd.net/new-ecosystem-zagros-mountains-2025-08-07">A New Ecosystem in Zagros Mountains and Fatal Fires of the Islamic Republic of Iran</a> appeared first on <a href="https://ikurd.net">iKurd News</a>.</p>
]]></description>
										<content:encoded><![CDATA[<figure id="attachment_134818" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-134818" style="width: 450px" class="wp-caption alignright"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-full wp-image-134818" src="https://ikurd.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Kurdish-environmental-activists-wildfire-Abider-Mountain-Sanandaj-Iranian-Kurdistan-Rojhelat-July-25-2025-irna-ir.jpg" alt="A New Ecosystem in Zagros Mountains and Fatal Fires" width="450" height="360" srcset="https://ikurd.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Kurdish-environmental-activists-wildfire-Abider-Mountain-Sanandaj-Iranian-Kurdistan-Rojhelat-July-25-2025-irna-ir.jpg 450w, https://ikurd.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Kurdish-environmental-activists-wildfire-Abider-Mountain-Sanandaj-Iranian-Kurdistan-Rojhelat-July-25-2025-irna-ir-300x240.jpg 300w" sizes="(max-width: 450px) 100vw, 450px" /><figcaption id="caption-attachment-134818" class="wp-caption-text">Kurdish environmental activists work to extinguish a wildfire on Abider Mountain near Sne (Sanandaj), in Iranian Kurdistan (Rojhelat), July 25, 2025. Photo: IRNA</figcaption></figure>
<p><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><strong>Dr. Amir Sharifi | Exclusive to iKurd.net</strong></span></p>
<p>How aptly Edward Abbey in <em>Desert Solitaire</em> has said “The love of wilderness is more than a hunger for what is always beyond reach; it is also an expression of loyalty to the earth, the earth which bore us and sustains us, the only paradise we shall ever know, the only paradise we ever need, if only we had the eyes to see.”</p>
<p>The news of such a love for inhabitants of my hometown was grim and gruesome. Fire had devoured the lives of Kurdish civilian activists as they battled with bare hands against raging blazes in the <i>Abydar Mount</i> overlooking the city of Sinna in <i>Rojhalat</i> in Eastern Kurdistan in Iran on July 25, 2025. Initially <span style="text-decoration: underline; color: #333333;"><a style="color: #333333; text-decoration: underline;" href="https://kurdistanhumanrights.org/en/news/2025/07/25/kurdish-activist-dies-four-injured-battling-wildfire-in-sanandaj" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><i>Hamid Moradi</i>, a lawyer</a></span><span style="color: #333333;"> and the director of “</span><span style="color: #333333;"><i>shnay nawjin”</i></span> or the “Breeze of New Life” lost his life; followed by the tragic death of two other friends, <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="color: #333333;"><a style="color: #333333; text-decoration: underline;" href="https://kurdistanhumanrights.org/en/news/2025/07/28/two-more-activists-die-from-injuries-after-mount-abidar-wildfire" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><i>Chiako Yousefinezhad</i> and <i>Khabat Amini</i></a></span></span> fatally injured in the same fire.</p>
<p>I lamented from afar, long before the onslaught of such fires, remembering the cool air, the coldness of the flowing spring water, the soft breeze caressing my childhood face and town from <i>Mount Abydar</i>. In my hometown, tens of thousands of mourners who had gathered in <i>Sinne</i>, turned their gratitude during the burial ceremony into anti-colonial rage and collective slogans against the repressive political regime of Iran and its colonial exploitation of Kurdish resources and deforestations, leading to the fatal fires in the Zagros Mountains.</p>
<figure id="attachment_134820" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-134820" style="width: 450px" class="wp-caption alignright"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-full wp-image-134820" src="https://ikurd.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Kurdish-activists-killed-while-fighting-wildfire-Iranian-Kurdistan-Rojhelat-July-2025-kurdistanhumanrights-org.jpg" alt="A New Ecosystem in Zagros Mountains and Fatal Fires" width="450" height="360" srcset="https://ikurd.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Kurdish-activists-killed-while-fighting-wildfire-Iranian-Kurdistan-Rojhelat-July-2025-kurdistanhumanrights-org.jpg 450w, https://ikurd.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Kurdish-activists-killed-while-fighting-wildfire-Iranian-Kurdistan-Rojhelat-July-2025-kurdistanhumanrights-org-300x240.jpg 300w" sizes="(max-width: 450px) 100vw, 450px" /><figcaption id="caption-attachment-134820" class="wp-caption-text">From left: Kurdish civilian activists Chiako Yousefinezhad, Khabat Amini, and Hamid Moradi lost their lives in July 2025 while battling wildfires in Iranian Kurdistan (Rojhelat). Photo: SM/Kurdistan Human Rights Organization/kurdistanhumanrights.org</figcaption></figure>
<p>Although this is not a paradox, Kurdish areas in <i>Rojhalat</i> or Eastern Kurdistan as a peripheral community are being deprived of their resources and water; extensive dams have been built and rivers diverted, subjecting Zagros Mountains, the source of the very survival of the habitat, to constant deforestation and perpetual dangers.</p>
<p>The Islamic Republic of Iran has wreaked havoc by deliberately contributing to the drying up the Sirwan River, an ancient river originating from the Zagros Mountains in <i>Rojhalat</i> in Eastern Kurdistan. In violation of all international laws, the regime has built diversion channels thus limiting the natural flow of the Sirwan river.</p>
<p>This encroachment has brought about utter devastation to an already vulnerable area. The river and its tributaries have served and sustained agricultural communities along the river for centuries in Eastern and Southern Kurdistan. The Iranian government’s overuse and abuse of this precious water resource has posed a serious threat to the economic and cultural survival of the many communities that live upstream and downstream.</p>
<p>The ecological threat to Kurdistan is so immense that women liberation and civilian organizations and movements under the slogan of “ئازادی, ژیان ژن,” “woman, life, freedom” have taken matters into their own hands in their attempt to condemn and play an active role in decolonizing the local resources.</p>
<p>The pillage nevertheless is not limited to <i>Rojhalat</i> or Eastern Kurdistan. The Turkish state has been following similar destructive patterns in Northern Kurdistan as well. It has ruthlessly continued to have a devastating impact on Kurdish populations living in Turkey, Syria, and Iraq by restricting water through its dam-building enterprises.</p>
<figure id="attachment_75895" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-75895" style="width: 450px" class="wp-caption alignright"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-full wp-image-75895" src="https://ikurd.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Turkey-Kurdish-antique-town-Hasankeyf-2014-saradistribution-com.jpg" alt="Turkey’s 12,000-year-old Kurdish antique town Hasankeyf to be destroyed with Ilisu Dam" width="450" height="360" srcset="https://ikurd.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Turkey-Kurdish-antique-town-Hasankeyf-2014-saradistribution-com.jpg 450w, https://ikurd.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Turkey-Kurdish-antique-town-Hasankeyf-2014-saradistribution-com-300x240.jpg 300w" sizes="(max-width: 450px) 100vw, 450px" /><figcaption id="caption-attachment-75895" class="wp-caption-text">Turkey’s 12,000-year-old Kurdish antique town Hasankeyf has been destroyed with Ilisu Dam. Photo: saradistribution.com</figcaption></figure>
<p>The fact of the matter is that the sociopolitical interests of the exploitative states outweigh any political and environmental considerations. The dam known as Ilisu flooded more than 50 Kurdish villages and 15 towns and brought under water in April of 2020 the city of Hasankeyf, a 12,000 years old, UNESCO recognized archaeological site.</p>
<p>Kurdish courageous youth and associations are to be complemented for their optimism and attempting to save Kurdistan proper from the grave threat of annihilation; the voracious geopolitical hegemony of dominant nations reveals a simple fact that democratic ideals need solidarity from intellectual and associational environmentalist movements as it is a struggle for local and global peace and justice.</p>
<p>Those who have lost their lives tragically, have inscribed a future that can only be built by abolishing or reducing the risk of environmental annihilation and disposition.</p>
<p>The environmental struggle is becoming our urgent rallying call, the impetus to make transformations in the socio-political fabric of our societies; in doing so, we need to join a united movement to safeguard ourselves and others. The Kurds should not be carrying the heavy burden of this struggle alone.</p>
<p>The three activists and volunteers were not the only ones nor are they the last as the environmental movement grows throughout the world. The environmentalists will have a greater impact on changing the status quo if other marginalized communities with a collective consciousness participate in a global social movement to protect and preserve the habitat for all human beings, plants, and animals.</p>
<p style="text-align: left;"><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong><a href="https://ikurd.net/author/dr-amir-sharifi">Dr Amir Sharifi</a></strong></span>, a lecturer at California State University, Department of Linguistics, Long Beach.</em></p>
<p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><em>The opinions are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent the views of iKurd.net or its editors.</em></span></p>
<p style="text-align: left;">Copyright © 2025 iKurd.net. All rights reserved</p>
<p>The post <a href="https://ikurd.net/new-ecosystem-zagros-mountains-2025-08-07">A New Ecosystem in Zagros Mountains and Fatal Fires of the Islamic Republic of Iran</a> appeared first on <a href="https://ikurd.net">iKurd News</a>.</p>
]]></content:encoded>
					
		
		
			</item>
		<item>
		<title>Artificial Intelligence and Intersection of Codes, Despair and Hope: film review</title>
		<link>https://ikurd.net/artificial-intelligence-intersection-2025-07-01</link>
		
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Dr. Amir Sharifi]]></dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Tue, 01 Jul 2025 05:00:22 +0000</pubDate>
				<category><![CDATA[Cinema]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Exclusive]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Kurdistan]]></category>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">https://ikurd.net/?p=133716</guid>

					<description><![CDATA[<p>Dr. Amir Sharifi &#124; Exclusive to iKurd.net I and moviegoers had the opportunity to see the private screening of three-mosaic short Kurdish film screening on June 26, 2025, at UCLA James Bridges Theater. Hamoun Dawlatshahi,, the winner of the Afred Sloan Cinema Filmmaker Fellowship had constructed the three short films of different lengths: Four Corners [&#8230;]</p>
<p>The post <a href="https://ikurd.net/artificial-intelligence-intersection-2025-07-01">Artificial Intelligence and Intersection of Codes, Despair and Hope: film review</a> appeared first on <a href="https://ikurd.net">iKurd News</a>.</p>
]]></description>
										<content:encoded><![CDATA[<figure id="attachment_133722" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-133722" style="width: 450px" class="wp-caption alignright"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-full wp-image-133722" src="https://ikurd.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Film-Jin-AI-director-Hamoun-Dawlatshahi-Dolatshahi-2025-Insta.jpg" alt="Artificial Intelligence and Intersection of Codes, Despair and Hope" width="450" height="360" srcset="https://ikurd.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Film-Jin-AI-director-Hamoun-Dawlatshahi-Dolatshahi-2025-Insta.jpg 450w, https://ikurd.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Film-Jin-AI-director-Hamoun-Dawlatshahi-Dolatshahi-2025-Insta-300x240.jpg 300w" sizes="(max-width: 450px) 100vw, 450px" /><figcaption id="caption-attachment-133722" class="wp-caption-text">Rojin, a Kurdish scientist at UCLA, and her beloved invention Jin, the most advanced Artificial General Intelligence coded in Kurdish, struggle to avert a catastrophe at a nuclear plan, 2025, Directed by Iranian Kurdish filmmaker Hamoun Dolatshahi . Photo: Hamoun Dawlatshahi&#8217;s Instagram</figcaption></figure>
<p data-start="201" data-end="711"><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><strong>Dr. Amir Sharifi | Exclusive to iKurd.net</strong></span></p>
<p>I and moviegoers had the opportunity to see the private screening of three-mosaic short Kurdish film screening on June 26, 2025, at UCLA James Bridges Theater.</p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="color: #333333;"><a style="color: #333333; text-decoration: underline;" href="https://www.sloanfilmsummit.org/people/hamoun-dolatshahi/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Hamoun Dawlatshahi</a></span></span>,, the winner of the Afred Sloan Cinema Filmmaker Fellowship had constructed the three short films of different lengths: Four Corners (5 mints), Interpreter (15 mints), and Jin (20 mints) show different aspects of Kurdish life and how cultural inner connections of various communities would be essential to our co-existence and survival.</p>
<p>While the Four Corner celebrates Kurdish cuisine, the Interpreter examines the difficult life of an interpreter in the US legal system and the lived experiences of refugees that an empathetic Interpreter eventually loses his job as he is suspected of hesitancy in providing the exact interpretation of the vulnerable refugee’s response.</p>
<p>Jin is the longest short and most powerful lyrical story, demonstrating how we share a profound connection through language, poetry, science, and music as the embodiment of ineradicable local and global harmony against a universal annihilation that awaits the world unless we act.</p>
<figure id="attachment_133720" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-133720" style="width: 450px" class="wp-caption alignright"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-full wp-image-133720" src="https://ikurd.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Film-Jin-AI-Director-Hamoun-Dolatshahi-Iran-2025-iKurd-net-Dolatshahi-inst.jpg" alt="Artificial Intelligence and Intersection of Codes, Despair and Hope" width="450" height="360" srcset="https://ikurd.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Film-Jin-AI-Director-Hamoun-Dolatshahi-Iran-2025-iKurd-net-Dolatshahi-inst.jpg 450w, https://ikurd.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Film-Jin-AI-Director-Hamoun-Dolatshahi-Iran-2025-iKurd-net-Dolatshahi-inst-300x240.jpg 300w" sizes="(max-width: 450px) 100vw, 450px" /><figcaption id="caption-attachment-133720" class="wp-caption-text">Rojin (left), a Kurdish scientist at UCLA, and her beloved invention, Jin—the most advanced Artificial General Intelligence coded in Kurdish—struggle to avert a catastrophe at a nuclear plant. Directed by Iranian Kurdish filmmaker Hamoun Dolatshahi. Photo: iKurd.net / Dolatshahi’s Instagram.</figcaption></figure>
<p>Rojin, a UCLA university professor enchants her students by linking nature, language and poetry in the works of <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="color: #333333;"><a style="color: #333333; text-decoration: underline;" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farzad_Kamangar" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Farzad Kemangar</a></span></span>, a teacher and poet prisoner who was executed by the Islamic Republic of Iran in May 2010 because like Zahra Mohammadi he taught “the alphabet of hope and equality.”</p>
<p>Viewers find out that Rojin as a scientist, is the inventor of an AI (Artificial Intelligence) coded device in Kurdish. American officials abruptly interrupt her class to seek her assistance to use her apparatus to save the earth from a horrific and fearsome nuclear catastrophe.</p>
<p>Viewers realize that “Jin” as an apparatus is a cultural artifact, an oracle of knowledge both philosophical and linguistic coded in Kurdish, capable of saving humanity from a nuclear tragedy in San Anton plant. While at the site, she understands the environmental and human cost of such a catastrophe through her own codes; however, the plant’s operators and government officials refuse to understand the implications of using a different code.</p>
<p>Eventually, Rojin saves the world from doomsday once the Kurdish language is recoded into English and hence Deborah orders the system to shutdown to end the horror, shock, and the unfolding calamity, Hope is once again restored through a Kurdish song.</p>
<p>Following the screening, a panel discussion led by the producer, Dawlatshahi, was held where the film crew revealed their personal background of cultural diversity and why and how they became involved in this altruistic project. Oscar Gervet, Liz Holland, the Assistant Director, along present actors including Karen Strassman, Joseph Gilbert, Jermey Roth Rose, and Nick Aren spoke about how their awareness was heightened and the import of their agency in the work.</p>
<p>Oscar Gervet spoke of a long process and how his collaboration with the film maker began and came to fruition as a “collective, complementary and collaborative” an act of dedication to a worthy project. Liz Holland, an A D ( Assistant Director) spoke of her ruminations and the passion she developed for the script:</p>
<p><em>“This is a movie that is important because AI (Artificial Intelligence) is potentially scary thing and there are many conversations about it; I think that we get to choose how to shape the future… it’s very easy to be dystopic about it ; and to believe the worst of it; and it’s harder and more rewarding to believe and shape the future we want to see for ourselves ; … is the one where people come together and try to communicate and even the part you have to sacrifice something for yourself ….understanding communication and miscommunication.&#8221;</em></p>
<p><em>&#8220;I mean when… “Jin” gets recoded, obviously it is a devastating moment, but that is the one being strong and ok, I need to reach people who cannot speak my language and maybe there is something deeper about why they do not understand; but, being the people, we bring you into our element and help you understand without trying to lose what makes it the original that creating what’s valuable in people, I just think this is beautiful because the movies say we can choose how AI should start . It can be positive.” </em></p>
<p>It is neither the mystical power of the “Terminator” nor beauty of Kurosawa’s “Dreams”, but the invisible despair, death, and destruction as in threads yet a simple and accessible code can reverse the process.</p>
<figure id="attachment_109670" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-109670" style="width: 450px" class="wp-caption alignright"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-full wp-image-109670" src="https://ikurd.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Protesters-Berlin-Mahsa-Jina-Amini-Jin-Jiyan-Azadi-Oct-22-2022-afp.jpg" alt="" width="450" height="360" srcset="https://ikurd.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Protesters-Berlin-Mahsa-Jina-Amini-Jin-Jiyan-Azadi-Oct-22-2022-afp.jpg 450w, https://ikurd.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Protesters-Berlin-Mahsa-Jina-Amini-Jin-Jiyan-Azadi-Oct-22-2022-afp-300x240.jpg 300w" sizes="(max-width: 450px) 100vw, 450px" /><figcaption id="caption-attachment-109670" class="wp-caption-text">Protesters hold a banner with the slogan in Kurdish &#8220;Jin, Jiyan, Azadi&#8221; (Woman, Life, Freedom) as they take part in a rally in support of the demonstrations in Iran over the death of Mahsa Jina Amini, in Berlin, October 22, 2022. Photo: AFP</figcaption></figure>
<p>Dawlatshahi, the producer stressed the need to put an end to Kurdish erasure and hegemonic wars. In uttering the slogan of “Woman, Life, and Freedom” “<span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong><a href="https://ikurd.net/remembering-jina-mahsa-amini-2023-09-17"><em data-start="4358" data-end="4377">Jin, Jiyan, Azadi</em></a></strong></span>”, he looked back and looked ahead as the spoke of the need for intersectionality within each community and its formative role in how multimodality can connect Kurdish poetry, language, dance, ecological wellbeing, and science to weave together the powerful narrative of “Jin”.</p>
<p>All operators in their multiplicity join in the habitus of Kurdish dance as a powerful and iconic symbol of unity of humanity against nuclear calamity that surrounds us as division is fomented. Although the apocalyptic end is near through terrifying music, frightening alarm sirens, thick smoke, panic and fearful expressions. tranquilly come to replace the chaos once Rojin recodes jin from Kurdish to English, soon after a mellow and calm Kurdish lyric and music wafts through the air.</p>
<p>Conversations about Kurdish politics and cultural identity and the impact of the films continued in the hallway where snacks were provided and the film crew enthusiastically answered questions.</p>
<p data-start="5190" data-end="5311"><strong data-start="5190" data-end="5265">Details about the stars and those who helped bring the project to life:</strong><br data-start="5265" data-end="5268" /><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="color: #333333;"><a class="" style="color: #333333; text-decoration: underline;" href="https://www.instagram.com/reel/DLago1WO1tE/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-start="5268" data-end="5311">https://www.instagram.com/reel/DLago1WO1tE/</a></span></span></p>
<p style="text-align: left;"><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong><a href="https://ikurd.net/author/dr-amir-sharifi">Dr Amir Sharifi</a></strong></span>, a lecturer at California State University, Department of Linguistics, Long Beach.</em></p>
<p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><em>The opinions are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent the views of iKurd.net or its editors.</em></span></p>
<p style="text-align: left;">Copyright © 2025 iKurd.net. All rights reserved</p>
<p>The post <a href="https://ikurd.net/artificial-intelligence-intersection-2025-07-01">Artificial Intelligence and Intersection of Codes, Despair and Hope: film review</a> appeared first on <a href="https://ikurd.net">iKurd News</a>.</p>
]]></content:encoded>
					
		
		
			</item>
		<item>
		<title>Remembering Jina-Mahsa Amini: Intersections of Feminism and Ethnicity</title>
		<link>https://ikurd.net/remembering-jina-mahsa-amini-2023-09-17</link>
		
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Dr. Amir Sharifi]]></dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Sun, 17 Sep 2023 10:00:46 +0000</pubDate>
				<category><![CDATA[Exclusive]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Kurdistan]]></category>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">https://wordpress-1318350-4815544.cloudwaysapps.com/?p=118180</guid>

					<description><![CDATA[<p>Dr. Amir Sharifi &#124; Exclusive to iKurd.net The Islamic Republic of Iran has embarked on an intense repression, in particular after it faced an intensive resistance following jina/Mahasa Amini’s brutal murder by the morality police on Sept 16, 2022. The feminist uprising began in Kurdish areas and spread like wildfire initially locally and then globally [&#8230;]</p>
<p>The post <a href="https://ikurd.net/remembering-jina-mahsa-amini-2023-09-17">Remembering Jina-Mahsa Amini: Intersections of Feminism and Ethnicity</a> appeared first on <a href="https://ikurd.net">iKurd News</a>.</p>
]]></description>
										<content:encoded><![CDATA[<figure id="attachment_118183" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-118183" style="width: 450px" class="wp-caption alignright"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-full wp-image-118183" src="https://ikurd.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Portrait-Mahsa-Jina-Amini-Milan-Italy-Sep-16-2023-epa.jpg" alt="Remembering Jina-Mahsa Amini: Intersections of Feminism and Ethnicity" width="450" height="360" srcset="https://ikurd.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Portrait-Mahsa-Jina-Amini-Milan-Italy-Sep-16-2023-epa.jpg 450w, https://ikurd.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Portrait-Mahsa-Jina-Amini-Milan-Italy-Sep-16-2023-epa-300x240.jpg 300w" sizes="(max-width: 450px) 100vw, 450px" /><figcaption id="caption-attachment-118183" class="wp-caption-text">A woman walks in Milan, Italy, in front of a portrait of Iranian Kurdish woman Mahsa Jina Amini, 22, who died on September 16, 2022 after being detained by Iran&#8217;s morality police enforcing strict Islamic hijab rules, September 16, 2023., Photo: EPA</figcaption></figure>
<p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><strong>Dr. Amir Sharifi | Exclusive to iKurd.net</strong></span></p>
<p style="text-align: left;">The Islamic Republic of Iran has embarked on an intense repression, in particular after it faced an intensive resistance following jina/Mahasa Amini’s brutal <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="color: #333333;"><a style="color: #333333; text-decoration: underline;" href="https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/iranian-woman-whose-death-led-mass-protests-was-shy-avoided-politics-2022-09-28/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">murder</a></span></span> by the morality police on Sept 16, 2022.</p>
<p style="text-align: left;">The feminist uprising began in Kurdish areas and spread like wildfire initially locally and then globally through social media with the Kurdish slogan of “jin, jiyan, Azadi” Woman, Life, and Freedom, calling for an end to the Shi’ite clerical rule and its patriarchal system throughout Iran.</p>
<p style="text-align: left;">It was the greatest feminist uprising ever seen in depth and breadth. Ensuing reports publicized the tragedy of the 22-year-old Jina Amini-Niloufar Hamedi and Elahe Mohammadi, two journalists who were imprisoned for their hospital report and jina’s funeral respectively.</p>
<p style="text-align: left;">In the course of eight months, more than 700 people were killed, 71 of them children; over 30, 000 people were arrested, many executed. Even a 9-year-old boy was shot dead by the security forces; many young girls and boys were raped as a parcel of draconian repression.</p>
<p style="text-align: left;">With commemoration of Jina / Mahsa Amini’s tragic death, a new spate of terror and repression began. The security forces threatened the family of Amini against marking Jina’s anniversary. Kurdish Human Rights Organization, Hengaw reported the parents would hold a commemorative event at Jina Amini’s gravesite in her hometown of Saghez. The latest reports indicate all access roads were blocked by the <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="color: #333333;"><a style="color: #333333; text-decoration: underline;" href="https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/irans-security-forces-detain-mahsa-aminis-father-anniversary-her-death-rights-2023-09-16/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">security forces</a></span></span> and their tanks and heavy artillery.</p>
<p style="text-align: left;">Hengaw Human Rights Association reports that the Islamic Republic has doubled down on draconian measures against anyone suspected of political and human rights activism and that there was an increase in arbitrary arrests and abductions a “17% [increase] compared to July of last year… women (36), children (11), Gilakis (22), Balochis (14), Azeri Turks (14), Bahais (17), Kurds (116). The report indicates that “44% were Kurdish citizens.” This trend and litany of violating the personal and international law against ethnic and religious minorities has increased.</p>
<figure id="attachment_108928" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-108928" style="width: 450px" class="wp-caption alignright"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-full wp-image-108928" src="https://ikurd.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Iranian-Kurdish-Mahsa-Zhina-Amini-died-morality-police-Sep-16-2022-sm.jpg" alt="Iranian Kurdish women Mahsa (Jina) Amini died after being detained by morality police enforcing strict hijab rules" width="450" height="360" srcset="https://ikurd.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Iranian-Kurdish-Mahsa-Zhina-Amini-died-morality-police-Sep-16-2022-sm.jpg 450w, https://ikurd.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Iranian-Kurdish-Mahsa-Zhina-Amini-died-morality-police-Sep-16-2022-sm-300x240.jpg 300w" sizes="(max-width: 450px) 100vw, 450px" /><figcaption id="caption-attachment-108928" class="wp-caption-text">Iranian Kurdish women Mahsa (Jina) Amini died after being detained by morality police enforcing strict Islamic hijab rules, September 16, 2022. Photo: SM</figcaption></figure>
<p style="text-align: left;">The military dictatorship of theocracy upheld by the Supreme leader and the IRGC (Sepeh-e Pasdaran-e-Engelab-e-Eslami) saw the hope and optimism of many and feared its own fall. Consequently, it used brute force to sustain a regime that had lost all its legitimacy even among its adherents.</p>
<p style="text-align: left;">Yet the universal slogan “Woman, Life, Freedom” has continued to withstand the savage onslaught of the regime, bent on not allowing the uprising to deepen into a revolution organized by civic and progressive organizations throughout Iran.</p>
<p style="text-align: left;">That is why family members and even lawyers of families who have lost their daughters and sons had been summoned and arrested, those provisionally freed have been threatened not to engage in any commemorative events and activities on the anniversary of Jina Amini’s death. The increase in arbitrary arrests and harassment of girls and young women as reported by the UN investigation, unveils the schizophrenia of the Islamic Regime.</p>
<p style="text-align: left;">The new feminist uprising that rocked the Shi’ite clerical rule and its system of gender apartheid is bound to continue till the collapse of theocracy. Widespread strikes have been reported in the highly militarized Kurdish towns and major city centers contrary to the regime’s, IRNA in its Goebel like propaganda announced Amini’s hometown was “completely quiet” due to “the vigilance and the presence of security and military forces”.</p>
<p style="text-align: left;">On the eve of Jina /Mahsa&#8217;s death, the regime in Iran had put <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="color: #333333;"><a style="color: #333333; text-decoration: underline;" href="https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/iranian-security-forces-release-mahsa-aminis-father-after-issuing-warning-rights-2023-09-16/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Amjad Amini, the father</a></span></span> of Jina/Mahsa Amini, under house arrest and militarily blocked and flooded access to the cemetery where Jina is buried. Kurds at home or in exile marked the anniversary as the rising repression threatens them as the harbingers of the new feminist uprising.</p>
<p style="text-align: left;">Protests will not settle down. Women continued to tear off their scarves despite harsher rules and decrees; Kurds and other ethnic groups such as Baluchis will continue to fight for their basic rights such as the right to education in their mother tongue and socio-cultural and linguistic self-determination despite theocratic and nationalist oppositions.</p>
<p style="text-align: left;">Resistance in the Kurdish city of Sne manifested itself by once again barricading the streets. Most stores and shops in at least 18 Kurdish cities had closed down in a general strike. Once again, the Kurdish population, women, girls, men and boys will pour into the streets in hundreds of thousands; they will create more barricades to bring down the regime.</p>
<p style="text-align: left;">Women will seek gender equity; they will dance and chant revolutionary and secular songs; Universities and high schools will continue to be citadels of resistance; more professors will rise in solidarity with their students and in defence of academic freedom.</p>
<p style="text-align: left;">The Kurdish participation in Jina Amini’s uprising was fostered by civic and human rights associations and sustained by the tradition of collective will in defense of freedom and socio-economic rights.</p>
<p style="text-align: left;">However, the rest of Iran did not rise to support the Kurdish revolutionary movement as the national hierarchy and cries of “independence” from the regime motivated royalists and Iranian nationalism to adopt their own defeating slogans of “territorial integrity “against “separatists” as the Islamic Republic succeeded to “divide and conquer.</p>
<p style="text-align: left;">The increased repression in “Kurdistan” enhances the political importance of the Kurdish resistance that continues to pose an existential threat to the entirety of the regime in Iran.</p>
<p style="text-align: left;">As we reflect on the slogan of “woman, life, freedom” and its symbolic significance one year after, we will continue to align ourselves with the true advocates of democracy in 2022; women have played a long and extensive role in the revolutionary uprising against the patriarchal culture in civil and political walks of life and resistance to oppression in their quest for equity and an inclusive democracy in which the youth men and women, workers, ethnic and religious minorities participate.</p>
<p style="text-align: left;">That is why the Islamic Republic is determined to annihilate their struggle against Hejab and other patriarchal structures of discrimination and violence as arrests and harassment against women and girls are on the rise, according to Amnesty International and UN investigations.</p>
<p style="text-align: left;">The violence unleashed against women and Kurds bespeaks of both patriarchy and politics of exclusion and erasure; yet feminist uprising is ultimately emancipatory as it is inclusive of diversity, the very basis on which a genuine democracy rests.</p>
<p style="text-align: left;"><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong><a href="https://ikurd.net/author/dr-amir-sharifi">Dr Amir Sharifi</a></strong></span>, a lecturer at California State University, Department of Linguistics, Long Beach.</em></p>
<p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><em>The opinions are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent the views of iKurd.net or its editors.</em></span></p>
<p style="text-align: left;">Copyright © 2023 iKurd.net. All rights reserved</p>
<p>The post <a href="https://ikurd.net/remembering-jina-mahsa-amini-2023-09-17">Remembering Jina-Mahsa Amini: Intersections of Feminism and Ethnicity</a> appeared first on <a href="https://ikurd.net">iKurd News</a>.</p>
]]></content:encoded>
					
		
		
			</item>
		<item>
		<title>Western Human Rights vs Terrorism of the Islamic Republic of Iran</title>
		<link>https://ikurd.net/western-human-rights-vs-2023-05-31</link>
		
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Dr. Amir Sharifi]]></dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Wed, 31 May 2023 07:00:12 +0000</pubDate>
				<category><![CDATA[Exclusive]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Kurdistan]]></category>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">https://wordpress-1318350-4815544.cloudwaysapps.com/?p=115902</guid>

					<description><![CDATA[<p>Dr. Amir Sharifi &#124; Exclusive to iKurd.net A new understanding of international law is needed as dismay and disillusionment with European philosophy of law in practice pervades Kurdish and Iranian diaspora after once again Europe re-enacts its dealings with the terrorist Islamic Republic of Iran. The question of human rights came to the fore again [&#8230;]</p>
<p>The post <a href="https://ikurd.net/western-human-rights-vs-2023-05-31">Western Human Rights vs Terrorism of the Islamic Republic of Iran</a> appeared first on <a href="https://ikurd.net">iKurd News</a>.</p>
]]></description>
										<content:encoded><![CDATA[<figure id="attachment_88591" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-88591" style="width: 450px" class="wp-caption alignright"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-full wp-image-88591" src="https://ikurd.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Iranian-flag-Vienna-July-10-2019-photo-Reuters.jpg" alt="Western Human Rights vs Terrorism of the Islamic Republic of Iran" width="450" height="360" srcset="https://ikurd.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Iranian-flag-Vienna-July-10-2019-photo-Reuters.jpg 450w, https://ikurd.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Iranian-flag-Vienna-July-10-2019-photo-Reuters-300x240.jpg 300w" sizes="(max-width: 450px) 100vw, 450px" /><figcaption id="caption-attachment-88591" class="wp-caption-text">The Iranian flag, Vienna, July 10, 2019. Photo: Reuters</figcaption></figure>
<p><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><strong>Dr. Amir Sharifi | Exclusive to iKurd.net</strong></span></p>
<p>A new understanding of international law is needed as dismay and disillusionment with European philosophy of law in practice pervades Kurdish and Iranian diaspora after once again Europe re-enacts its dealings with the terrorist Islamic Republic of Iran.</p>
<p>The question of human rights came to the fore again as Belgium released a convicted terrorist <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="color: #333333;"><a style="color: #333333; text-decoration: underline;" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asadollah_Asadi" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Assodollah Assadi</a></span></span> in exchange for a Belgian humanitarian worker, Oliver Vandcasteele who had been imprisoned in Iran for more than a year.</p>
<p>Assadi, a third consular in Vienna, had been caught red handed by European intelligence services, for providing explosives and a detonator to two other terrorists to bomb Iranian dissidents. More recently the regime in Iran in revenge, had condemned the Belgian humanitarian relief worker to twice as many years and 74 lashes for alleged charges such as “espionage”, charges that Belgian government had found to be “fabricated” and had demanded the <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="color: #333333;"><a style="color: #333333; text-decoration: underline;" href="https://www.reuters.com/world/iran-envoy-drops-appeal-prison-belgium-over-bomb-plot-2021-05-05/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">release</a></span></span> of the aid worker to no avail until a deal was concluded with the Islamic Republic.</p>
<p>While the release of the Belgian calls for jubilation, human rights organizations and entities are in lamentation when it comes to the release of the notorious terrorist, Assadi. Amnesty International bemoans an “Orwellian” tendency in European states not to treat terrorism a “trampling of fundamental freedoms”.</p>
<figure id="attachment_115908" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-115908" style="width: 450px" class="wp-caption alignright"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-full wp-image-115908" src="https://ikurd.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/Swedish-Iranian-national-Habib-Farajollah-Chaab-Tehran-Oct-25-2022-wana-via-Reuters.jpg" alt="Western Human Rights vs Terrorism of the Islamic Republic of Iran" width="450" height="360" srcset="https://ikurd.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/Swedish-Iranian-national-Habib-Farajollah-Chaab-Tehran-Oct-25-2022-wana-via-Reuters.jpg 450w, https://ikurd.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/Swedish-Iranian-national-Habib-Farajollah-Chaab-Tehran-Oct-25-2022-wana-via-Reuters-300x240.jpg 300w" sizes="(max-width: 450px) 100vw, 450px" /><figcaption id="caption-attachment-115908" class="wp-caption-text">Swedish-Iranian national Habib Farajollah Chaab seen during his trial in Tehran, Iran on October 25, 2022. He was executed on May 6, 2023. Photo: Mizan News Agency/WANA/via Reuters</figcaption></figure>
<p>What is underneath of all this is the reformation of a historical appeasement between Europe and US with a terrorist state which in violations of international conventions has murdered a great many young women and men and kept thousands of people in prisons and their families and friends as hostages.</p>
<p>This very regime kidnapped <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="color: #333333;"><a style="color: #333333; text-decoration: underline;" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habib_Chaab" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Habib Chaab</a></span></span>, a dual citizen who as an ethnic Arab had been living in exile in Sweden for a decade, was <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="color: #333333;"><a style="color: #333333; text-decoration: underline;" href="https://www.reuters.com/article/iran-security-arrest-turkey-int-idUSKBN28O1HD" target="_blank" rel="noopener">abducted</a></span></span> in 2020 and then in 2023 <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="color: #333333;"><a style="color: #333333; text-decoration: underline;" href="https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/iran-hangs-swedish-iranian-over-attack-that-killed-25-people-state-media-2023-05-06/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">executed</a></span></span>.</p>
<p>The crimes committed against those inside and outside the country acknowledged previously by European States, now encounter open contradictions as Europeans such as Belgium after a temporary lull in the uprising for justice and fundamental rights in Iran, are switched into politically legitimating terrorism and denying clashes between human rights in Iran and European anti-terrorism laws in international law.</p>
<p>The fact of the matter is that from now on Kurdish and Iranian diaspora would not be safe as European states and the U.S find it their legitimate right to redefine terrorism in re-entering negotiations with the despotic regime in Iran where once again the activists, journalists, and critics, and a more active diasporic community would be the immediate target and facing even more retributions, surveillance and the unlawful actions such as kidnapping, assassinations for which the Islamic Republic of Iran has a notorious history particularly in Europe where European states are again more inclined to follow a transactional notion, a commodified human right in the pursuit of their own interests as in the past they turned a blind eye to try and tackle terrorism despite their claims not to undermine protection of human rights .</p>
<p>These violations of human rights and international law will reduce human rights to bartering with terrorism as if it was a legitimate system of diplomatic relations in paradoxical legal positions for which the theocratic regime spreads fear mongering and violence both inside and outside the country.</p>
<figure id="attachment_17760" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-17760" style="width: 450px" class="wp-caption alignright"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-full wp-image-17760" src="https://ikurd.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Dr.-Abdul-Rahman-Ghassemlou-photo-wikipedia.jpg" alt="Western Human Rights vs Terrorism of the Islamic Republic of Iran" width="450" height="360" srcset="https://ikurd.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Dr.-Abdul-Rahman-Ghassemlou-photo-wikipedia.jpg 450w, https://ikurd.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Dr.-Abdul-Rahman-Ghassemlou-photo-wikipedia-300x240.jpg 300w" sizes="(max-width: 450px) 100vw, 450px" /><figcaption id="caption-attachment-17760" class="wp-caption-text">Iranian Kurdish leader Dr Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou and two of his colleagues were assassinated in Vienna during negotiations with Iranian agents in July 1989. Photo: Wikipedia</figcaption></figure>
<p>Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou ,the Kurdish Democratic Party of Iran (KDPI) secretary general, along with Abullah Ghderi Azar and Fadhil Rassoul, were assassinated in Vienna in July 1989, but the Austrian government set the perpetrators free to return to Iran, revealing the legal contradictions of its law and politics, letting Islamic Republic of Iran use terrorism as a political tool to advance its own ends.</p>
<p>Then came Mykonos assassinations when on Sept 1992, the successor to Ghassemlou as KDPI general secretary, Sharafkandi along with three of his companions were brutally assassinated, such assassinations have not been limited to Kurds. Shapour Bakhtiar, the last prime minister under monarchy, was butchered in Paris as was Hussien Mazi, the general secretary of “Arab Front for the Liberation of al-Ahwaz”.</p>
<figure id="attachment_22185" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-22185" style="width: 450px" class="wp-caption alignright"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-full wp-image-22185" src="https://ikurd.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Iranian-Kurdish-KDPI-leader-Sadegh-Sharafkandi-photo-archive.jpg" alt="Iranian Kurdish KDPI leader Sadegh Sharafkandi" width="450" height="360" srcset="https://ikurd.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Iranian-Kurdish-KDPI-leader-Sadegh-Sharafkandi-photo-archive.jpg 450w, https://ikurd.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Iranian-Kurdish-KDPI-leader-Sadegh-Sharafkandi-photo-archive-300x240.jpg 300w" sizes="(max-width: 450px) 100vw, 450px" /><figcaption id="caption-attachment-22185" class="wp-caption-text">Iranian Kurdish KDPI leader Sadegh Sharafkandi. He was assassinated on September 17, 1992, at the Mykonos restaurant in Berlin, Germany. Photo: archive</figcaption></figure>
<p>The impact of terrorism on human rights and its dangers in Europe and Iran in the case of Belgium is telling as the Belgian government has invoked the Belgian constitution to revoke its previous foreign policy. This is no longer a political allegory.</p>
<p>These developments legitimize terrorism that would have been condemned otherwise. The release of the notorious terrorist- who had only served 5 years of his twenty-year convictions- casts light on the transactional nature of human rights and international law.</p>
<p>The case shows how international law is the locus for the convergence and divergence of internal, external, and transnational politics and policies with respect to human rights.</p>
<p>The current release of a convicted terrorist is a testing ground the failures of international human rights guarantees at its worst. For instance, the world knows that the Islamic Republic does not recognize human rights as it defies international bodies and courts; its maxims and jurisprudence are used for covert and overt securitization and militarization of life ; its raisons d&#8217;être is contrary to the most fundamental human rights to its citizenry, but the question is if European complicity with the Islamic Republic has a better justification for ratifying a terrorist state in violation of the European conventions of Human Rights between individual and communal rights and their response to state terrorism in their respective countries .</p>
<figure id="attachment_110505" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-110505" style="width: 450px" class="wp-caption alignright"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-full wp-image-110505" src="https://ikurd.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Iran-morality-police-woman-Islam-Tehran-July-23-2007-afp.jpg" alt="" width="450" height="360" srcset="https://ikurd.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Iran-morality-police-woman-Islam-Tehran-July-23-2007-afp.jpg 450w, https://ikurd.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Iran-morality-police-woman-Islam-Tehran-July-23-2007-afp-300x240.jpg 300w" sizes="(max-width: 450px) 100vw, 450px" /><figcaption id="caption-attachment-110505" class="wp-caption-text">An Iranian policeman from the morality police speaks with a woman siting in a police car after she was arrested because of her &#8220;inappropriate&#8221; Islamic clothes in Tehran, Iran, July, 23, 2007. Photo: AFP</figcaption></figure>
<p>Human rights is more relevant than ever. Islamic Republic of Iran has arbitrarily arrested, imprisoned and tortured many; it has massacred thousands indiscriminately; it has militarized and murdered Kurds both in Iran and Iraq, and sent countless people to the gallows and has renewed imposing mandatory Hejab on women through digital surveillance and intimidations. Human rights advocates continue to promote human rights as an equal fundamental global right.</p>
<p>European States have capabilities and possibilities to exercise political power and agency in enforcing human right everywhere not just as a moral imperative but as a matter of global legal and political equity. They need to entirely denounce terrorism as the scourge of humanity bent on shattering any conventions. The alternative can be seen as the convergence of human rights with the convergence of interests that redefines human rights neither as a commodity nor as the propriety of a singular community.</p>
<p>In other words, it is the protest movements along with the steadfastness of democracy that could challenge autocracies by creating the possibility for human rights to separate lawfulness of human rights as national security from the barbarity of terrorism, conquering and dividing our world. Only such a dynamic and transformative democracy can save our world from its invasion.</p>
<p><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong><a href="https://ikurd.net/author/dr-amir-sharifi">Dr Amir Sharifi</a></strong></span>, a lecturer at California State University, Department of Linguistics, Long Beach.</em></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><em>The opinions are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent the views of iKurd.net or its editors.</em></span></p>
<p>Copyright © 2023 iKurd.net. All rights reserved</p>
<p>The post <a href="https://ikurd.net/western-human-rights-vs-2023-05-31">Western Human Rights vs Terrorism of the Islamic Republic of Iran</a> appeared first on <a href="https://ikurd.net">iKurd News</a>.</p>
]]></content:encoded>
					
		
		
			</item>
		<item>
		<title>Letter to Mr. Anthony Blinken over Turkish threats to Syria&#8217;s Kurds</title>
		<link>https://ikurd.net/letter-mr-anthony-blinken-2022-12-08</link>
		
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Dr. Amir Sharifi]]></dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Thu, 08 Dec 2022 11:00:43 +0000</pubDate>
				<category><![CDATA[Exclusive]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Kurdistan]]></category>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">https://wordpress-1318350-4815544.cloudwaysapps.com/?p=110586</guid>

					<description><![CDATA[<p>Dr. Amir Sharifi &#124; Exclusive to iKurd.net Dear Mr. Anthony Blinken , The U.S Secretary of State : As a Kurdish American, I am deeply concerned about the Turkish escalating assaults on Kurdish civilians and our allies in the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). Scores of innocent civilians have been killed and the vulnerable infrastructure including [&#8230;]</p>
<p>The post <a href="https://ikurd.net/letter-mr-anthony-blinken-2022-12-08">Letter to Mr. Anthony Blinken over Turkish threats to Syria&#8217;s Kurds</a> appeared first on <a href="https://ikurd.net">iKurd News</a>.</p>
]]></description>
										<content:encoded><![CDATA[<figure id="attachment_110593" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-110593" style="width: 450px" class="wp-caption alignright"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-full wp-image-110593" src="https://ikurd.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Turkey-bombing-Syrian-Kurdistan-Rojava-Nov-2022-anha.jpg" alt="Letter to Mr. Anthony Blinken over Turkish threats to Syrias Kurds" width="450" height="360" srcset="https://ikurd.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Turkey-bombing-Syrian-Kurdistan-Rojava-Nov-2022-anha.jpg 450w, https://ikurd.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Turkey-bombing-Syrian-Kurdistan-Rojava-Nov-2022-anha-300x240.jpg 300w" sizes="(max-width: 450px) 100vw, 450px" /><figcaption id="caption-attachment-110593" class="wp-caption-text">Turkey strikes Kurds in Syrian Kurdistan (Rojava), November 2022. Photo: ANHA News Agency</figcaption></figure>
<p><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><strong>Dr. Amir Sharifi | Exclusive to iKurd.net</strong></span></p>
<p>Dear Mr. Anthony Blinken , The U.S Secretary of State :</p>
<p>As a Kurdish American, I am deeply concerned about the Turkish escalating assaults on Kurdish civilians and our allies in the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). Scores of innocent civilians have been killed and the vulnerable infrastructure including schools, hospitals, and power plants in Northeast Syria (NES) have been targeted and bombed while Turkish preparations for ground offensive are under way.</p>
<p>I and other Kurdish Americans are closely watching developments and the US senators’ and representatives’ reactions to these assaults. Nevertheless, we are dismayed at the insufficiency and lack of decisiveness on behalf of the U.S administration. This is not how we show our respect and gratitude to those who valiantly, with help from us, fought and defeated Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) at a time that Erdogan was praying for the victory of ISIS against the entire world.</p>
<p>From 2019 on, Turkey has used any groundless excuse including the last baseless pretext of an explosion in Turkey to occupy, terrorize, and ethnically cleanse the entire area in NES. Human rights organizations have documented how both Turkish military and the Jihadist forces have wreaked havoc in in cantons such as Afrin and other places. We have all seen haunting images of rape, kidnapping, intimidation, destruction of homes, deforestation, and pillage of the area.</p>
<figure id="attachment_70890" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-70890" style="width: 450px" class="wp-caption alignright"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-full wp-image-70890" src="https://ikurd.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Syrian-kurds-flee-Afrin-after-Turkish-attacks-Mar-10-2018-Reuters.jpg" alt="Syrian kurds flee Afrin city after Turkish assault" width="450" height="360" srcset="https://ikurd.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Syrian-kurds-flee-Afrin-after-Turkish-attacks-Mar-10-2018-Reuters.jpg 450w, https://ikurd.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Syrian-kurds-flee-Afrin-after-Turkish-attacks-Mar-10-2018-Reuters-300x240.jpg 300w" sizes="(max-width: 450px) 100vw, 450px" /><figcaption id="caption-attachment-70890" class="wp-caption-text">Syrian Kurds flee after Turkish-backed fighters captured Khaldieh village in eastern Afrin, Syrian Kurdistan (Rojava) on March 10, 2018. Photo: Reuters</figcaption></figure>
<p>As you know, SDF has been able to build a broad-based democracy in which all religious and ethnic minorities feel empowered and represented; (NES) is a region that for the first time in history has put into practice gender equity and shown us how the political and cultural power of liberated women lays the foundation of parity and humanism in the Middle East.</p>
<p>We urge you to stop this ferocious aggression as you have rightfully <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="color: #333333;"><a style="color: #333333; text-decoration: underline;" href="https://www.reuters.com/world/us-announce-3-bln-arms-package-ukraine-ap-reporter-tweet-2022-08-23/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">done</a></span></span> so in Ukraine. Kurdish people and other ethnicities who are descendants of family survivors of genocidal campaigns by Turkey have gained some basic rights and continuity for the first time.</p>
<p>The U.S with losing the Kurds would lose any influence and presence in Syria for decade to come and turns Syria into a domain of influence for Russia, Syria, and Iran. Different ethnicities and religions in NES have fought for and gained basic fundamental freedoms at least as much if not longer. As we strive to defeat ISIS and develop new ways of ending their anachronistic and repressive ideology, we wonder why the U.S administration does not stop the Turkish state that has continued to threaten the Western world and civilization with its fundamentalist and Islamist ideology. Any capitulation to the dictatorial regime of Turkey has grave implications for us.</p>
<figure id="attachment_79187" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-79187" style="width: 450px" class="wp-caption alignright"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-full wp-image-79187" src="https://ikurd.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Kurdish-YPJ-SDF-female-fighters-guards-IS-suspects-March-14-2019-anf.jpg" alt="Kurdish YPJ/SDF female fighters guards Islamic State suspects" width="450" height="360" srcset="https://ikurd.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Kurdish-YPJ-SDF-female-fighters-guards-IS-suspects-March-14-2019-anf.jpg 450w, https://ikurd.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Kurdish-YPJ-SDF-female-fighters-guards-IS-suspects-March-14-2019-anf-300x240.jpg 300w" sizes="(max-width: 450px) 100vw, 450px" /><figcaption id="caption-attachment-79187" class="wp-caption-text">Syrian Kurdish YPJ/SDF female fighters guard Islamic State suspects and civilians who escaped ISIS, March 14, 2019. Photo: ANF</figcaption></figure>
<p>We have survived the serious threat of ISIS, but more than 11,000 people in NES lost their lives to bring this relative peace about. Neither we nor you want to see what has befallen areas in NES under the siege of Turkey and its Jihadist forces.</p>
<p>The lack of international legitimacy not afforded to SDF has aggravated the situation and emboldened Turkey. As a Kurdish American I believe that the U.S government made the right decision to support SDF in its anti-ISIS campaign in pursuing world peace and stability.</p>
<p>Turkey again is <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="color: #333333; text-decoration: underline;"><a style="color: #333333; text-decoration: underline;" href="https://www.reuters.com/world/us-urges-de-escalation-syria-after-series-retaliatory-strikes-2022-11-22/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">threatening</a></span></span> this relative stability and sabotaging the war against ISIS. NES faces an existential threat, an ethnic genocide as publicly announced by Erdogan. A humanitarian catastrophe is inevitable- continuing massacres, a forced migration of displaced people, ethnic cleansing, environmental devastation, resurgence of ISIS unless we halt Turkey, and its second largest army in the world.</p>
<p>As Kurdish Americans we do not want to be a generation of democrats and republicans without democracy. American tradition calls for taking care of those who took care of us. You can hardly find a democrat or a republican who is not pleased with the global role that Women’s Protection Unites (YPJ) and Men’s Protection Units (YPG) have played in defeating ISIS.</p>
<p>The US has to be more resolute and explicit in using sanctions to halt the Turkish attacks before hundreds of thousands of defenseless and innocent people have to endure incalculable suffering and displacement in the midst of possible ISIS resurgence. It is our moral responsibility and constitutional commitment and vision to halt Turkish continuing intervention, erosion and or erasure of religious and ethnic identities in Northeast Syria or Rojava.</p>
<p>Cordially</p>
<p>Petition Link:<br />
<span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="color: #333333;"><a style="color: #333333; text-decoration: underline;" href="https://chng.it/PcWkWJCDTJ" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://chng.it/PcWkWJCDTJ</a></span></span></p>
<p><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong><a href="https://ikurd.net/author/dr-amir-sharifi">Dr Amir Sharifi</a></strong></span>, Co-Director of the Kurdish Human Rights Advocacy Group ( KHRAG), Los Angeles.</em></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><em>The opinions are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent the views of iKurd.net or its editors.</em></span></p>
<p>Copyright © 2022 iKurd.net. All rights reserved</p>
<p>The post <a href="https://ikurd.net/letter-mr-anthony-blinken-2022-12-08">Letter to Mr. Anthony Blinken over Turkish threats to Syria&#8217;s Kurds</a> appeared first on <a href="https://ikurd.net">iKurd News</a>.</p>
]]></content:encoded>
					
		
		
			</item>
		<item>
		<title>Petition to The US President Biden and UN General Secretary over Iran&#8217;s Brutal Attack on Mahabad</title>
		<link>https://ikurd.net/petition-us-president-biden-2022-11-21</link>
		
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Dr. Amir Sharifi]]></dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Mon, 21 Nov 2022 08:00:41 +0000</pubDate>
				<category><![CDATA[Opinions]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Kurdistan]]></category>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">https://wordpress-1318350-4815544.cloudwaysapps.com/?p=110267</guid>

					<description><![CDATA[<p>Dr. Amir Sharifi &#124; Exclusive to iKurd.net Dear President Biden and UN Secretary-General António Guterres: I am writing to express my grave concern about the fate of the innocent and defenseless people in the Kurdish city of Mahabad in Iran. Our collective conscience is shocked by the depth of the brutality of the regime in [&#8230;]</p>
<p>The post <a href="https://ikurd.net/petition-us-president-biden-2022-11-21">Petition to The US President Biden and UN General Secretary over Iran&#8217;s Brutal Attack on Mahabad</a> appeared first on <a href="https://ikurd.net">iKurd News</a>.</p>
]]></description>
										<content:encoded><![CDATA[<figure id="attachment_110269" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-110269" style="width: 450px" class="wp-caption alignright"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-full wp-image-110269" src="https://ikurd.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Iranian-security-firing-protesters-Kurdish-Mahabad-Rojhelat-Nov-20-2022-sm.jpg" alt="Petition to The US President Biden and UN General Secretary over Irans Brutal Attack on Mahabad" width="450" height="360" srcset="https://ikurd.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Iranian-security-firing-protesters-Kurdish-Mahabad-Rojhelat-Nov-20-2022-sm.jpg 450w, https://ikurd.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Iranian-security-firing-protesters-Kurdish-Mahabad-Rojhelat-Nov-20-2022-sm-300x240.jpg 300w" sizes="(max-width: 450px) 100vw, 450px" /><figcaption id="caption-attachment-110269" class="wp-caption-text">Iranian security forces firing towards protesters in the Kurdish city of Mahabad in Iranian Kurdistan (Rojhelat), November 20, 2022. Photo: MS</figcaption></figure>
<p><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><strong>Dr. Amir Sharifi | Exclusive to iKurd.net</strong></span></p>
<p>Dear President Biden and UN Secretary-General António Guterres:</p>
<p>I am writing to express my grave concern about the fate of the innocent and defenseless people in the Kurdish city of Mahabad in Iran. Our collective conscience is shocked by the depth of the brutality of the regime in Mahabad and throughout Iran.</p>
<p>Mahabad is now being singled out and indiscriminately attacked; multiple reports indicate that heavy fire is being used to terrorize and massacre defenseless people. Videos show women, men, and children screaming; there are explosive sounds, rumbling, and relentless gunfire. <span style="color: #333333;"><a style="color: #333333;" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahabad" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Mahabad</a></span> like other Kurdish cities has been in the forefront of the struggle against the tyranny of the Islamic regime; hence, it should not be left alone as the regime imposes curfews on the city .</p>
<p>As a concerned citizen, I request your immediate actions to halt the genocidal campaign perpetrated against the inhabitants of the city. I hope that in recognizing the democratic and legitimate women’s uprising and general movement for the ouster of the Islamic Republic of Iran, you take prompt and needed actions to stop the regime from perpetrating this heinous crime. The world community should stop the brutal killing of hundreds of mostly young people, children, kidnapping and abduction of slain and wounded bodies, capturing tens of thousands and holding them as hostages for forceful confessions and executions.</p>
<p>I hope you use the power of your office to deter and halt the Islamic regime from such massacres, the regional threats it poses , political machinations it commits, and military operations it launches.</p>
<p>I thank you for your support and solidarity with the feminist uprising in Kurdish cities and throughout Iran.</p>
<p>Cordially,</p>
<p>Amir Sharifi</p>
<p>cc&#8217;d to the US Secretary of State Mr. Anthony Blinken<br />
Link to the petition</p>
<p>To sign visit: <a href="https://chng.it/rPyLtRQNpF" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><span style="text-decoration: underline; color: #4a4a4a;"><strong>https://chng.it/rPyLtRQNpF</strong></span></a></p>
<p><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong><a href="https://ikurd.net/author/dr-amir-sharifi">Dr Amir Sharifi</a></strong></span>, Co-Director of the Kurdish Human Rights Advocacy Group ( KHRAG), Los Angeles.</em></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><em>The opinions are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent the views of iKurd.net or its editors.</em></span></p>
<p>Copyright © 2022 iKurd.net. All rights reserved</p>
<p>The post <a href="https://ikurd.net/petition-us-president-biden-2022-11-21">Petition to The US President Biden and UN General Secretary over Iran&#8217;s Brutal Attack on Mahabad</a> appeared first on <a href="https://ikurd.net">iKurd News</a>.</p>
]]></content:encoded>
					
		
		
			</item>
		<item>
		<title>Open letter to Robert Malley, about his Tweet concerning human rights and Iran protesters</title>
		<link>https://ikurd.net/open-letter-robert-malley-2022-10-25</link>
		
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Dr. Amir Sharifi]]></dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Tue, 25 Oct 2022 08:00:56 +0000</pubDate>
				<category><![CDATA[Exclusive]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Iran]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[US]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Kurdistan]]></category>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">https://wordpress-1318350-4815544.cloudwaysapps.com/?p=109699</guid>

					<description><![CDATA[<p>Dr. Amir Sharifi &#124; Exclusive to iKurd.net Open Letter to the US State Department CC: Antony Blinken Dear Mr. Malley, As a Kurdish American advocate of human rights from Iran, I am outraged at your latest tweet, for you reduce the collective will of the Iranian protesters to a state plea for respect for human [&#8230;]</p>
<p>The post <a href="https://ikurd.net/open-letter-robert-malley-2022-10-25">Open letter to Robert Malley, about his Tweet concerning human rights and Iran protesters</a> appeared first on <a href="https://ikurd.net">iKurd News</a>.</p>
]]></description>
										<content:encoded><![CDATA[<figure id="attachment_109701" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-109701" style="width: 450px" class="wp-caption alignright"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-full wp-image-109701" src="https://ikurd.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Robert-Malley-Biden-administration-special-envoy-for-Iran-April-7-2021-cc-wikimedia-org.jpg" alt="Open Letter to Robert Malley, about his Tweet concerning human rights and Iran protesters" width="450" height="360" srcset="https://ikurd.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Robert-Malley-Biden-administration-special-envoy-for-Iran-April-7-2021-cc-wikimedia-org.jpg 450w, https://ikurd.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Robert-Malley-Biden-administration-special-envoy-for-Iran-April-7-2021-cc-wikimedia-org-300x240.jpg 300w" sizes="(max-width: 450px) 100vw, 450px" /><figcaption id="caption-attachment-109701" class="wp-caption-text">Robert Malley, Biden administration special envoy for Iran, April 7, 2021. Photo: Creative Commons/wikimedia.org</figcaption></figure>
<p><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><strong>Dr. Amir Sharifi | Exclusive to iKurd.net</strong></span></p>
<p>Open Letter to the US State Department<br />
CC: Antony Blinken</p>
<p>Dear Mr. Malley,</p>
<p>As a Kurdish American advocate of human rights from Iran, I am outraged at your latest <span style="color: #575757;"><strong><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a style="color: #575757; text-decoration: underline;" href="https://twitter.com/usenvoyiran/status/1583981630175469569" target="_blank" rel="noopener">tweet</a></span></strong></span>, for you reduce the collective will of the Iranian protesters to a state plea for respect for human rights and you do so in the name of protesters. In your tweet, you state “</p>
<p>“Marchers in Washington and cities around the world are showing their support for the Iranian people, who continue to peacefully demonstrate for their government to respect their dignity and human rights,” These words are dubious and complicit in the face of protesters’ repeated outcry for the overthrow of the Islamic regime. Mr. Malley, you are expected to have precision, total transparency and solidarity with the protesters, particularly when the nuclear deal has been called off by the American government.</p>
<p>Let us not forget the Islamic regime has been launching pervasive massacre against all, particularly the Kurds ever since its inception. It has denied the Kurds the most fundamental cultural and linguistic rights. That is why, the official first name of the murdered young woman, Amini was Mahsa rather her Kurdish name Jina (pronounced Zhina).</p>
<p>Kurds as vanguards of women rights and political struggle for freedom, have seen and experienced the most brutal crackdown in Kurdish cities against students, teachers, women, and men who have risen once again to overthrow the Islamic Republic. <span style="color: #333333;"><a style="color: #333333;" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baloch_people" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Baluchis</a></span>, another religious and ethnic minority, have also borne the brunt of such a brutality in the bloodbaths of the Islamic regime. An unequivocal transparency would warrant an explanation into the reasoning behind your statement.</p>
<p>A more coherent and decisive foreign policy is required. The US administration has gone from seeing the nuclear deal as being “tenuous’ to “not [being] our focus” to becoming defunct now. Moreover, human rights and fundamental freedoms, cherished universal values, are anathema to the norms of the Islamic Republic of Iran. It is paradoxical if any American administration harbours any hope in resuming talks with a regime that is brutalizing young women, men, students, prisoners, and even children.</p>
<p>The inspiring words of President Biden raised new hopes among protesters both inside and in diaspora. I find it infuriating to see both criminal violence on the streets, campuses, and prisons in Iran and the unbearable tragedies that Islamic regime&#8217;s drones and missiles have caused in &#8220;Kurdistan&#8221; in Iraq and Ukraine.</p>
<p>The Kurdish and Iranian protesters both inside the country and in diaspora have found the solution in toppling the regime. For us, respect for human rights has always meant the systematic condemnation and investigation of the perpetrators of human rights abuses in international tribunals. The Iranian protesters are determined to end the regime and its repressive machinery.</p>
<p>For these reasons, I, as a Kurdish American expect, unconditional international solidarity in the struggle for freedom and democracy. A US led initiative of global solidarity will amplify the spirit of the uprising against the Islamic Republic in its totality and its relentless repression of human rights.</p>
<p>Cordially</p>
<p>Dr. Amir Sharifi<br />
Lecturer in Linguistics<br />
California State University, Long Beach</p>
<p><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong><a href="https://ikurd.net/author/dr-amir-sharifi">Dr Amir Sharifi</a></strong></span>, Co-Director of the Kurdish Human Rights Advocacy Group ( KHRAG), Los Angeles.</em></p>
<p><em>The opinions are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent the views of iKurd.net or its editors.</em></p>
<p>Copyright © 2022 iKurd.net. All rights reserved</p>
<p>The post <a href="https://ikurd.net/open-letter-robert-malley-2022-10-25">Open letter to Robert Malley, about his Tweet concerning human rights and Iran protesters</a> appeared first on <a href="https://ikurd.net">iKurd News</a>.</p>
]]></content:encoded>
					
		
		
			</item>
	</channel>
</rss>
