MESOP MIDEAST WATCH MEMRI Daily Brief No. 447 – The Execution Of Kurds By The Islamic Republic Of Iran / FULL REPORT
By: Himdad Mustafa 12-1-23
Over the past decade, tensions between the Iranian central government and its Kurdish minority have been rising, as economic inequality and cultural and ethnic oppression grew. In particular, since the beginning of the 2022 uprising against the Islamic Republic, which spread from Kurdistan to all over Iran after the killing of the 22-year-old Kurdish girl, Jina (Mahsa) Amini, the Iranian regime has escalated its repression against the Kurdish minority.
“Jîna giyan, to namirî, nawit ebête remiz” (“Jina, my soul. You will not die. Your name will become a symbol”), these are the Kurdish words engraved on Jina Amini’s gravestone by her family, a few days before she became the national symbol of the revolution against the Islamic Republic of Iran. (Source: See MEMRI Daily Brief No. 425, 40 Days Without Jina – The Revolution Continues In Her Name, October 26, 2022)
Khomeini’s “Firman” Against Kurds Still Haunts Them After 43 Years
Hoping to achieve greater autonomy under the rule of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Kurds initially supported the 1979 Revolution, as many other Iranians did. However, they soon revolted against the new regime as their demands for basic human and ethnic rights were rejected.
In August 1979, Khomeini issued a firman (“order”), authorizing the massacre of the Kurdish people, whom Khomeini called koffar (“unbelievers”). A military campaign to exert control over the Kurdish region between 1979-1983 resulted in almost 10,000 deaths (almost 1,200 of them were political prisoners and were executed). Entire Kurdish towns and villages were shuttered to the ground to force Kurds into submission. Furthermore, the Kurdish language and Kurdish political parties – which Khomeini called “parties of Satan” – were banned.
It is worth noting that, in those years, Ayatollah Sadeq Khalkhali, who was appointed by Khomeini as the Head of the Islamic Revolutionary Court and was known for his public hatred of the Kurds, became known as the “Hanging Judge” because of his usage of summary and mass executions to crush the Kurdish uprising against the Islamic Republic.
In addition, in 1980, Qassem Soleimani, who at the time was just 23 years old, was given the command of a volunteer force from his home province of Kerman, which became the 41st Tharallah Division of the IRGC. This newly formed division was deployed to Iran’s Kurdistan province. It was here that Soleimani gained first-hand war experience and rose to prominence for his role in quelling the Kurdish uprising.
Khomeini’s firman still has repercussions on how the Iranian central government deals with Kurdistan. Over the past four decades, Kurdish people in Iran have faced intersectional discrimination, and they have been oppressed for both their religious (the majority of Iran’s Kurds are Sunni) and ethnic backgrounds.
A report by Iran Human Rights (IHR) stated: “The absolute majority of those executed for their political affiliation belong to ethnic minority groups, and in particular to the Kurdish minority. An overview of IHRNGO reports between 2010 and 2021 shows that among the 137 people who were executed for affiliation to banned political and militant groups, there were 70 Kurds (51%), 38 Baluch (28%) and 21 Arabs (15%). Furthermore, most of those executed from these groups were Sunni Muslims.”
The Norway-based Hengaw Organization for Human Rights also reported: “According to Amnesty International’s annual report on executions in 2021, with the exception of China, where the number of executions is unknown, at least 597 prisoners have been executed in 17 other countries. Comparing the statistics of this organization with the statistics recorded in the Statistics Center of Hengaw Human Rights Organization, it can be said that more than 8.2% of all executions in the world last year were Kurdish citizens in Iran… According to statistics previously published by Hengaw Human Rights Organization, in 2021, at least 48 Kurdish prisoners were executed in the prisons in Iran, which compared to Amnesty International statistics, shows that… 15.3% of all executions in Iran were Kurdish citizens.”
Concerning the year 2022, the Hengaw organization stated: “At least 52 Kurdish citizens were executed and more than 2,212 people were arrested, 155 of whom were tried and sentenced to death, imprisonment, and flogging.”