Khalid Azizi, leadership member of KDPI, 2019. Photo: KDP Press
HEWLÊR-Erbil, Iraq’s Kurdistan region,— An agreement between Iran and the Iranian Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP-Iran) is not “impossible”, the party’s leader said, as protests against fuel price hike hit the country.
Former General-Secretary of the party and KDPI leadership member Khalid Azizi, told NRT TV on Sunday that the party had held talks with the Iranian authorities several times.
“We have never remained silent over the incidents in Iran and eastern Kurdistan,” Azizi added, referring to the Kurdish areas in Iran.
Regarding the protests, Azizi said the protests that are related to daily issues were a “good excuse” for the people to take to the streets.
“The people need to ask why they increase the fuel price while Iran spends billions of dollars in other countries for its specific interests,” he noted.
Iranians took to the streets over the last three days to voice their opposition to a decision to increase the price of gasoline. Demonstrations took place in around 40 cities.
Hengaw Organization, which monitors human rights abuses in the Iranian Kurdistan, said on Sunday that nearly 30 protesters had been killed and 147 others had been wounded during the protests in Iranian Kurdistan (Rojhelat), the Kurdish areas of Iran.
There is no official figure of the casualties, however.
As many as forty people were also detained in the city of Yazd in the central part of the country after clashes erupted between protesters and police during the demonstrations, according to the semi-official ISNA news agency.
The authorities have also restricted internet access in Iran in attempt to crack down on the nationwide protests.
Netblocks, a website that monitors online services, said late Saturday the country was in the grip of an internet shutdown.
Ever since its emergence in 1979 the Islamic regime imposed discriminatory rules and laws against the Kurds in all social, political and economic fields.
Iran’s Kurdish minority live mainly in the west and north-west of the country. They experience discrimination in the enjoyment of their religious, economic and cultural rights.
Parents are banned from registering their babies with certain Kurdish names, and religious minorities that are mainly or partially Kurdish are targeted by measures designed to stigmatize and isolate them.
Kurds are also discriminated against in their access to employment, adequate housing and political rights, and so suffer entrenched poverty, which has further marginalized them.
Kurdish human rights defenders, community activists, and journalists often face arbitrary arrest and prosecution. Others – including some political activists – suffer torture, grossly unfair trials before Revolutionary Courts and, in some cases, the death penalty.
Kurdish armed nationalist groups including PJAK have been carrying out attacks against Iranian forces in the Kurdistan Province of Iran (Eastern Kurdistan) and other Kurdish-inhabited areas.
Since 2004 the PJAK (Partiya Jiyana Azad a Kurdistane) took up arms to establish a semi-autonomous Kurdish regional entities or Kurdish federal states in Iran, similar to the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in Iraq. The PJAK has more than 3,000 armed militiamen, half the members of PJAK are women.
Estimate to over 12 million Kurds live in Iranian Kurdistan (Rojhelat).
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