The Passing of Akram Mayi: True Kurdish Values

Sheri Laizer | Exclusive to iKurd.net

I can still hear the resonance of Akram’s voice as he addressed a celebrity audience in Boston in the winter of 1990.

On December 12, he spoke in Bahdini Kurdish using a translator even though his English was excellent. I had nominated him for the Reebok Human Rights Award, putting the nomination through my friend, British musician, Peter Gabriel who was one of the board’s leading figures. That year the three winners were a Kurd, a Palestinian and a Tibetan.

Akram had been one of the spokesmen for the 100,000 Iraqi Kurds living in three squalid refugee camps, in Diyarbakir, Mardin and Mush after fleeing chemical attacks on the border with Turkey. He had told me how he had grown up in Baghdad and then graduated in engineering from Basra University, Iraq, in 1980. He then began working as an agricultural engineer in Dohuk [Duhok]. In 1982, he had joined the peshmerga and was active with them for seven years until fleeing to Turkey in the mass exodus of 1988. [1]

Tri-lingual, speaking Arabic, Kurdish and English, Akram had become a peshmerga for the KDP towards the end of the Iran-Iraq war. His charisma and leadership abilities soon brought him to prominence. He was at the forefront of the press conference held with then Turkish president, Turgut Ozal and his wife, Semra Hanim, watched over by Turkish police.

The Peshmerga and hundreds of families crossed the border en masse, making international headlines as they fled the wrath of Chemical Ali—cousin of President Saddam Hussein—who by this time was even more feared than the Iraqi leader himself.

The peshmerga were thin, weary and dusty squatting in front of the Turkish leader who claimed part Kurdish ancestry.

Akram became one of the leaders of some 30,000 refugees installed in the rough confines of Diyarbakir camp. We met in Diyarbakir town, as it then was, and I interviewed him several times for my book in progress at the time, Into Kurdistan -Frontiers Under Fire [2]. Those encounters were then incorporated into its chapters and also formed the opening of its sequel, Martyrs, Traitors and Patriots – Kurdistan after the Gulf War.3

Foreign journalists would also meet Mohamad Shafiq from the camp who also spoke English. He went back to Zakho soon after the Kurdish uprising got underway there where our paths crossed. He was killed in internal Kurdish score settling: The KDP had planned to kill Sadik Omar, one of the PUK’s military leaders and then the relatives of Sadik Omar killed Mohamad Shafiq.

Akram’s sense of humour and conviction, even in adversity always shone through. While in Diyarbakir he had developed friendly relations with the Kurdish political fraternity there, including the late Vedat Aydin, assassinated by the Turkish police in, and Kurdish lawyer, Fethi Gumus, among the circle.

His courage, kindness and eagerness to better the welfare of his people impressed me and other Westerners that met him as being the true Kurdish values. [4] Transiting the UK en route to the ceremony in the States he met Labour MP and future leader, Jeremy Corbyn, and Lord Hylton where he addressed a meeting in the House of Commons.

After the awards ceremony in Boston, and with a modest prize in the form of a cheque to enable him to pursue human rights work, Akram planned to start a charity for Kurdish children.

We were hosted at the Kurdish Library in Brooklyn by the dedicated Vera Beaudin Saedpour and afterwards, visited Washington DC and stayed as guests of the KDP representative, Muhiydin Rahman, Muhyidin was assassinated in an internal score settling after returning to Kurdistan following the Kurdish uprising of 1991. I had met up with again him in Sulaimaniya when filming the documentary, Kurdistan: Dreaming a Nation in 1993, presented by well-known broadcaster, Michael Ignatieff. [5]

Akram had not gone back at that time but was granted political asylum in Switzerland, the awards event followed a month later by the outbreak of the first Gulf War on January 16, 1991, followed by the Kurdish uprising in March 1991. When I had told Akram I was going back to Kurdistan to film the uprising, he put me in contact with his family in Dohuk. There, as part of a two-person team for Journeyman Pictures, we put together an extended news feature that became the Fall of Dohuk [6].

We were also forced to flee the shelling by the Iraqi army and join the mass civilian exodus to the mountains bordering Turkey along with Akram’s peshmerga brother and male cousins. There, the Turkish army kept us on the mountainside in the snow before arresting us for illegal entry. Thousands of others fled to Iran.

Akram married, and then raised a large family. He went back to Dohuk where he founded his Kurdish charity for children. He demanded to be politically and economically independent but his old party, the ruling KDP, did not approve of this.

Akram’s office was raided, his computers and files seized. He wrote to me saying, “I tried to save my family from the bad authorities and look after their future, that’s why I am in Canada. I wagered and lost too much from the Kurdish government. They closed my NGO and listened to all my phone calls. What about you, are you in good health? I miss you. You are always my best friend.” He added that he felt hopeless and that’s why he had left the country. [7]

Thousands of Kurdish youth felt the same and were also fleeing from their leaders.

Akram had caught COVID in Canada and been hospitalised in August 2021 writing: “There is no news from you since a long time. Over the last four months l passed a very hard time in hospital because of Corona and just three days ago l came back home. I can’t walk freely yet and l can’t eat or drink anything yet either but l am recovering slowly…”

Worn down by exile and fatigued by the dialysis treatment that he was taking three times a week, he opted to return to Kurdistan to try to sell a piece of land for a kidney transplant. “I will not ask anyone for help,” he wrote in February 2022. However, before the transplant could take place, Akram suffered a stroke and instead lost his life on November 2, 2023.

Last week, I found out about his decease by sheer chance through recent contacts in Kurdistan. I felt it to be my duty as one of Akram’s friends to remember the truly patriotic and dedicated Kurdish fighter who shunned wealth and ostentation but lost the battle with ill health.

Our tears fall like autumn rain for our shining friend, Akram Mayi.

Fly on, free and fearless defender.

Sheri Laizer, a Middle East and North African expert specialist and well known commentator on the Kurdish issue. She is a senior contributing writer for iKurd.net. More about Sheri Laizer see below.

The opinions are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent the views of iKurd.net or its editors.

Copyright © 2024 Sheri Laizer, iKurd.net. All rights reserved

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