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Paris: Diverse Iranian opposition groups
set ground for joint action
18.6.2007
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June 18, 2007
Paris, France, -- The first conference
grouping Iran's diverse opposition groups ranging
from monarchists to Marxists, separatist ethnic
groups, nationalists, students and women's rights
groups, has ended with the declared aim to work
towards a unitary movement. The three-day event in
Paris which ended Sunday took place as the Iranian
government of ultraconservative president Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad is cracking down on civil liberties and
confronting a dire economic situation in the
domestic arena while facing an international crisis
over its pursuit of sensitive nuclear work which has
made it the target of two waves of UN sanctions.
"International factors and the acceleration of an
international crisis but most of all the country's
serious political situation and the growing number
of protests by workers, women's rights activists and
students have made this conference necessary and
possible," said Shahriar Ahi, a well-known
opposition member and monarchist.
"Putting around a table representatives of such
diverse movements, ideologies and ethnic groups in
Iran is by itself a feat which should not be
underestimated," said Ahi, who lives in Washington
and is considered one of the most influential
advisers to Reza Pahlavi, the son of the former Shah
of Iran who is living in exile in the US. He has not
returned to his home country since the 1979 Iranian
Revolution.
However, cohabitation in a joint movement is not
easy for ethnic minorities, mostly Kurds who were
represented in Paris by the Democratic Party of
Iranian Kurdistan (PDKI) and Komalah, two historic
parties of the Iranian Kurdish population, and
nationalists and monarchists. Indeed significant
divergences have almost caused the conference to
fail given that, except for the Iranian Left, other
secular and Islamic movements do not recognise the
right of ethnic groups to be "a nation among
nations" in multi-ethnic Iran where minorities -
including the largest Azeri (24 percent), Gilaki and
Mazandarani (8 percent), Kurd (7 percent), Arab (3
percent), Lur, Baloch and Turkmen (2 percent) -
accuse the Persian majority (51 percent) of
significant discrimination.
"Politics is the art of mediation and I believe we
have succeeded in preparing the ground for a unitary
movement," said Shahriar Ahi at the end of the
conference.
Indeed a member of Komalah, the Marxist wing of the
Kurdish movement, who asked not to be identified,
said that "we have accepted to continue to discuss
and try to find a solution for this divergence which
has always made cooperation between ethnic
minorities and the Persian majority difficult."
The conference was also attended by student
activists and women's rights campaigners who have
been recently forced to leave the country following
the government's crackdown on their movements under
a new moralisation campaign re-enforcing strict
Islamic codes to civil society. Out of the roughly
300 delegates taking part in the conference - only
about ten are still living in Iran.
According to Amir Farshad Ebrahimi, a former member
of Ansar Hezbollah, a paramilitary organization
controlled by the powerful Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati,
"exiled opposition groups cannot and should not
impose their choices on movements operating inside
the country."
Ebrahimi, who has spent a year in jail for
denouncing the role of armed militias in the
repression of students' movements, also said that
"groups fighting within the country for change
believe that the exiled should speak for them,
bringing their message to the international public
opinion and mobilising the domestic public through
radio and television networks as well as the
Internet."
Delegates from Iran, mostly activists in workers'
groups and women's rights movements, chose not to
address the conference because, according to the
former member of Ansar Hezbollah, "movements such as
that of women and labourers cannot identify
themselves with exiles and because by forging too
close a tie with activists living abroad they would
loose the little freedom they still have."
The conference, which took place amid tight security
measures and under the scrutiny of Western
governments, ended with the election of a
coordinating committee which will have to boost the
network of opposition groups aspiring to a regime
change in Iran similar to the one achieved by the
Solidarity (Solidarnosc) movement of Lech Walesa in
Poland, credited with launching an irreversible
process towards freedom and the collapse of
communism in eastern Europe.
adnki com
**
Iranian Kurdistan (Kurdish: Kurdistana Īranź or
Kurdistana Rojhilat (Eastern Kurdistan) or Rojhilatź
Kurdistan (East of Kurdistan) is an unofficial name
for the parts of Iran inhabited by Kurds and has
borders with Iraq and Turkey.
It includes the
greater parts of West Azerbaijan province, Kurdistan
Province, Kermanshah Province, and Ilam Province.
Kurds form the majority of the population of this
region with an estimated population of 4 million.
The region is the eastern part of the greater
cultural-geographical area called Kurdistan.
More about Iranian Kurdistan
KDPI
The Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran in Kurdish
(Hīzbī Dźmokiratī Kurdistanī Źran) is a Kurdish
opposition group in Iranian Kurdistan which seeks
the attainment of Kurdish national rights within a
democratic federal republic of Iran.
The current
General Secretary of the Democratic Party of Iranian
Kurdistan is Mustafa Hijri
More about KDPI- Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran
** The use of the term "Kurdistan" is vigorously
rejected due to its alleged political implications
by the Republic of Turkey, which does not recognize
the existence of a "Turkish Kurdistan" Southeast
Turkey.
Kurds are not recognized as an official minority in
Turkey and are denied rights granted to other
minority groups. Under EU pressure, Turkey recently
granted Kurds limited rights for broadcasts and
education in the Kurdish language, but critics say
the measures do not go far enough.
Others estimate over 40 million Kurds live in
Big Kurdistan (Iraq, Turkey, Syria, Iran, Armenia),
which covers an area as big as France, about half of
all Kurds which estimate to 20 million live in
Turkey.
Turkey is home to over 25 million ethnic Kurds, some
of whom openly sympathise with the Kurdish PKK for a
Kurdish homeland in the country's mainly Kurdish
southeast of Turkey.
Before August 2002, the Turkish government placed
severe restrictions on the use of Kurdish language,
prohibiting the language in education and broadcast
media.
The Kurdish alphabet is still not recognized
in Turkey, and use of the Kurdish letters X, W, Q
which do not exist in the Turkish
alphabet has led to judicial persecution in 2000 and
2003
The Kurdish flag flown officially in Iraqi Kurdistan
but unofficially flown by Kurds in Armenia. The flag
is banned in Iran, Syria, and Turkey where flying it
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