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I Exist, Said The Kurdish Dragon
12.5.2012
By Azadîxwaz
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Ekurd.net
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May 12, 2012
There was a dead town in Syria. The tombstone read
“Qamişlo” and on the grave lay red, yellow and green
plastic roses. My knees are still hurting because I
often kneeled down by the grave and begged the town
to come back to life. Sometimes I threw myself on it
to prevent the dazed youth from joining their
parents in the soil. They merely looked at me
pitiyingly and pushed me away. They had good reason
to do so because what human is alive if he does not
exist?
A Fatal Census
Kime ez? asked Cegerxwîn (1903 – 1984), a celebrated
Kurdish poet. Who am I? Nobody, the Syrian
government answered, you do not exist.
In August 1962 the Syrian government ordered a
census in the province of Hasakeh which was carried
out in October 1962. The province is situated in the
northern parts of Syria and mostly inhabited by
Kurds seeing as this area is the western part of
Kurdistan that was divided between Turkey, Iran,
Iraq and Syria as a consequence of the Lausanne
Treaty in 1923.
The census was fatal for the Kurds as it resulted in
120.000 Kurds loosing their Syrian citizenship and
thus their rights. The number of stateless Kurds has
according to Human Rights Watch since then only
continued to grow to a number of 300.000 because
children of the stateless, born and raised in Syria,
have not been given citizenship either.
In April 2011 the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad
said he would grant the Kurds citizenship. This did
not cause much joy for two reasons. First, only
registered Kurds would be given official identity
papers while non-registered would remain stateless.
Second, it was a poor way to keep the Kurds, who
consitute 10 – 15 % of the Syrian population, from
joining the anti-regime protests that had begun only
weeks earlier.
You Deserved To Be Gassed!
They say the uprising started in Damascus, March
2011. No, it started in Qamişlo, March 2004. A
report from KurdWatch that gathers information about
violation of human rights against Kurds within the
Syrian borders closely describes what happened on
March 12, 2004.
A football match was to be played at the stadium in
Qamişlo. The team al-Futuwah was an Arabic team from
Deir ez Zor and the other team, al-Jihad, was from
Qamişlo. According to the Danish Refugee Council
quoted in the report, an eyewitness said that the
supporters of al-Futuwah had not been checked by
security before entering the stadium and that they
brought weapon in the form of knives, sticks and
stones with them.
A journalist sitting in the press box observed that
the supporters of al-Futuwah prior to the game had
kept shouting: “Fallujah, Fallujah!” after which
they started attacking the other team’s supporters
with the sticks and stones they had brought with
them. According to the report, “Fallujah” was a way
for the supporters of al-Futuwah to show their
support to Saddam Hussein,www.ekurd.net
one of the worst oppressors in the history of Kurds,
who in 1988 ordered the gassing of the Kurdish town
Halabja which killed more than 5.000 people and
injured more than 10.000.
While the attack took place, three young men came to
the press box and asked another journalist, who was
to comment on the match on radio, if he would
announce that three children had been killed during
the attack. The news spread and people from the
nearest towns came to the stadium in such large
numbers that the journalist described the stadium as
being besieged. But the death of the three children
soon proved wrong and people both inside and outside
the stadium grew calm.
The peace did not last long as people soon began to
throw with rocks and the police, military and
intelligence service arrived to the stadium.
The report remarks that the security made a mistake
by shooting into the air and thus frightening
people; they should have instead tried dissolving
the growing angry crowd with other measures. The
first mentioned journalist said according to the
report that supporters of al-Futuwah called out to
the Kurds: “Saddam Hussein treated you they way you
deserve to be treated!”
At this point the security people stepped in and
split up the two groups. The Kurds were told to
leave while al-Futuwah supporters remained inside
the stadium.
According to eyewitnesses the security consisting of
the police, military and intelligence shot and even
killed Kurds who protested al- Futuwahs
discriminating heckling by saying “Long live
Kurdistan.” A witness said that security was being
untruthful when it later claimed that the Kurds were
shooting back: “Even the government have not stated
this.”
9 people died on the 12th of March 2004. The Kurdish
parties made an agreement with the government; if
they were allowed to bury their murdered Kurds
without the involvement of the police, they would
make sure to keep the funeral procession under
control. A journalist described the procession
joined by tens of thousands of people as being
quiet. Kurds waved the Kurdish flag, a few cried out
in anger at Bashar al-Assad and others threw rocks
at a statue of Assad’s father, Hafez al-Assad, a man
so feared and infamous that before one did not even
dare point their fingers at pictures of him. But
other Kurds stopped them from throwing stones and
the mourners continued walking towards the city
hall.
At some point during the march one could hear shots
from a military base nearby. Nothing happened and
the procession continued. The journalist who had
walked with the mourners left them to visit a lawyer
whose office had a view over the square where the
march had passed through. He was standing near the
window when a car drove by. The car was open in the
back and 7-8 men were sitting facing the square with
their machine guns. They drove up to the few
mourners at the back of the funeral procession and
shot them. That day 23 people died.
The word about the killings spread and soon hell
broke loose. People in the Kurdish towns set public
buildings on fire while large demonstrations were
held abroad in solidarity with the Kurds and support
of the much anticipated uprising against al-Assad.
According to the report sources say that the Kurdish
TV-channel ROJ TV, broadcasting from Denmark, was an
important factor in mobilising the Kurds and
gathering them at demonstrations in dimensions never
seen before in West Kurdistan. The government’s
crack down on the protests was brutal, and the
Kurdish voice was once again brought to silence.
A Kurdish Dragon
Ketin xewê, ketin xewê, ketin xewa zilm û zorê,
ketin xewa bindestiyê. They have been lulled into a
deep sleep by the oppressor, Cegerxwîn said about
the Kurds.
In the time after the uprising no one dared say a
word about al-Assad. Many families had either lost a
son to death or to the security service who usually
came early in the morning and took the young Kurdish
men away. My friend, who had only been out to buy
bread on March 12, was brought home to his mom alive
after one month in a jail in Damascus, tortured and
with his teeth missing.
The grief of Kurds was deeper than the wells in
their garden, it was a grief that paralysed the town
and rest of West Kurdistan. Qamişlo was dead because
its sons were dead. The Kurdish mothers tore their
hair and ripped their clothes apart, the Kurdish
fathers rocked back and forth with tears dripping
down on the palms of their hands and the Kurdish
sisters and brothers sat side by side, numb and with
their heads falling first against their chest, then
the wall.
The windows of Qamişlo are barred. The bars are
shaped as flowers, fountains and sunrises but it
does not change the fact that the town is a prison.
The question is how can dead people tear off the
window bars and demand freedom?
I was sitting in a livingroom in Qamişlo in January
2011, only weeks before the uprising in Syria began,
and watching the people in Tunis overthrow Ben Ali.
I once again asked the elder Kurds what this meant
to them and what they would do. Nothing, they
answered, never will we rise against al-Assad. I
asked the young Kurds what they would do. They did
not answer but I could see a fire in them I had
never seen before.
Belê em in ejdehayê, ji xewa dili, siyar bûn niha,
Cegerxwîn writes. The sleep of the Kurds will not
last forever; the Kurdish people is a dragon that
will awaken, ready to fight all injustice done to
it.
The dragon is my generation, the dragon are the
young men and women. Their sleep is not as deep as
the sleep of their parents.
They are alive. They are Kurdistan.
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