MESOPOTAMIA NEWS STATEMENTS : PDKI Leader: “No Iranian Terrorist Attacks or Threats Will Stop Our Struggle”

EAST KURDISTAN (IRAN) – September 13, 2018 – MESOP NEWS – In his first televised message to the Kurdish nation following the Iranian regime’s ballistic missile attack on PDKI’s headquarters and adjacent refugee camps on September 8, Mustafa Hijri, the leader of the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan (PDKI), vowed to intensify the party’s combined military and civil resistance campaign known as Rasan in spite of terrorist attacks and threats from the clerical regime in Tehran.

In his televised speech, Hijri said “the officials of the Islamists regime might conclude from this missile attack that they have put an end to the Kurdish people’s struggle [for liberty], but they should know that for the past century, their predecessors too carried out hundreds of massacres against the Kurds, repeatedly destroyed Kurdistan, plundered its resources […] but contrary to their objectives, the Kurdish struggle gained in strength over time and today Kurdistan is more determined than ever to achieve liberty.”

“The more severe the oppression, the more determined will the Kurdish nation become in resisting it,” Hijri averred.

Contrary to the regime’s propaganda, which paints the ballistic missile attack against Kurdish party officials and refugees in a neighboring country as a victory, the PDKI leader pointed to the fact that this cowardly attack comes at a time when the regime is extremely vulnerable due to multiple crises at home and is facing increasing international resistance and sanctions.

The nature of the regime and its destructive policies at home and abroad, the PDKI leader highlighted, “have embroiled the Islamic Republic in so many self-made crises that it cannot escape from them; rather, they get worse and have crippling effects.”

Meanwhile, Hijri added, “the Kurdish movement has gained in strength in the past years,” and as in the past, the regime resorts to violent crackdown and terrorist attacks to suppress the Kurdish movement. In his speech, the PDKI leader also addressed the international community, explaining that “we are denied education in our mother tongue, our history and cultural heritage are distorted [by the Iranian state], our environment is destroyed […] the Kurdish provinces have the highest rate of unemployment [compared to the rest of Iran], poverty forces Kurds to resort to carrying goods on their backs on the border [between Iraqi and Iranian Kurdistan] in order to make a living, yet Kurdish couriers are killed [by Iranian forces], and the killings are so frequent that they have become a normal condition.”

The Kurdish leader pointed out that the clerical regime in Iran has used Islam to justify violence against the Kurdish people ever since the founder of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Khomeini, declared jihad or “holy war” against Kurdistan following the 1979 revolution.

The Islamist regime in Iran suppresses all forms of organized Kurdish resistance in the name of fighting “counter-revolutionary” forces and, lately, in the name of “national security”, while the regime, in fact, is a threat to the security of the Kurdish nation as well as human security in Iran and the Middle East – as is evident in Iran’s involvement in the many wars in the region from Yemen to Syria.

The leader of PDKI also addressed other political forces in the Kurdish liberation movement, calling for greater unity at a time when the Iranian regime is on the verge of collapse.

Finally, the PDKI leader thanked the brave Kurdish people, who defied the threats and intimidations of the Islamist regime and went on strike across Kurdistan on September 12 to condemn the Iranian regime’s ballistic missile attack against Kurdish party officials and civilians in Iraqi Kurdistan. The Cooperation Center of Iranian Kurdistan’s Political Parties called on the Kurdish people to go on strike to condemn the missile attack, as well as the execution of Kurdish political prisoners. The strike has unnerved the already weak Iranian regime. www.mesop.de