SYRIA / WESTKURDISTAN : European Parliament, Brussels on 23 September 2013

STATEMENT By Dr Jawad Mella / President of Kurdistan National Congress-KNC

To the Conference on Democracy, Self-determination and Liberation of Peoples at the European Parliament, Brussels on 23 September 2013

The Kurdish people is the fourth largest nation in the Middle East and the largest nation in the world without a national state. In the aftermath of the First World War when the Ottoman Empire disintegrated in 1918 it seemed the most reasonable solution that Kurdistan should be granted national independence. Although the Treaty of Sevres, 1920, did provide the creation of an independent Kurdish State, when Mustafa Kamal became the Turkish leader he refused to accept this. A second treaty of Lauzanne was signed in 1923, and Kurdistan was not mentioned in it at all, not as free and not as colony.

We received from the UN two lists:

1. Around 200 states members of the UN as free countries.

2. 16 nations still colonised and are not free.

We did not see Kurdistan inside both lists, not as a free country and not as occupied country as well, that’s mean; Kurdistan is wiped off the map as a stolen country.At the end of World War II, Germany was occupied and divided because in that war had more than 55 million people lost their lives, but after 45 years Germany become free and united again, but Kurdistan now more than 90 years has been divided and the Kurdish people did not occupied or killed others as Germany did to be punished. I hope it is the time to the international community to review their policies which forgot the existence of Kurdistan and other nations to be united and free again, and to end this unbearable situation.

French and British empires after the First World War separated Kurdistan into five parts and gave them as gifts to other nations? More than 90 years, we would like to know the reason of this division? Does the international community have any political solution for the cause of Kurdistan of more than 50 million Kurds still without a national State in the 21st century?

‘We have been made to feel like unwanted tenants in our own lands’

We were enslaved and our wealth looted over centuries and we were repressed – physically, culturally and linguistically, and stripped of our national heritage, identity, language, culture, dignity and freedom, and our countries have been stolen, millions of our civilians faced genocides or were sent into exile, or otherwise reduced to ‘minorities’ in our own land, the minds of our peoples have also been ‘colonised’, and our history has been rewritten to erase our achievements and civilisations.

The Tamazight, Tuaregs, Kabayel, Azawad, Copts, Nubians, Africans of Sudan, the Arameans, Armenians, Phoenicians, the Maronites, Assyrians, Kurds, Hebrews, Chaldeans, Laz, Baluchis, Pashtuns, Tamils, Rohingya, Sabah, Sarawak, Tibet, Kashmir, Sindhi, Sikhs, Biafra, Benin, Catalan, Basque, Welsh, Irish, Scottish, Chechnya, Tatars, Mabuchi, Red Indians and other dozens of the peoples of the world which have been wiped out from the map, and asking to be supported in our struggle to achieve national self-determination through a general referendum supervised by the international community.

Dr. Jawad Mella – Tel: 0044 208 748 7874 – Mobile: 0044 7768 266 005

Skype & Facebook: Jawad Mella