Zilan Vejin, co-chair of Iran’s Kurdistan Free Life Party (PJAK) group, May 21 2019. Photo: Roj TV/rojnews.news
HEWLÊR-Erbil, Iraq’s Kurdistan region,— Kurdistan Free Life Party (PJAK) fighters will not “sit idly by” if the U.S. goes to war with Iran, and could form a democratic front against the regime in Tehran, militia chief Zilan Vejin said in comments published Wednesday.
PJAK, is a militant Kurdish nationalist group based on the border areas between Iraq’s Kurdistan region and Iranian Kurdistan region, that has been carrying out attacks 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.
It is affiliated with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), a leftwing guerrilla movement which fights for great political and cultural rights for Kurds.
PJAK’s fighters regularly attack Iranian border guards and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp (IRGC) personnel. Iranian forces often respond with cross-border rockets.
“We will not sit idly by if war breaks out between Iran and the US,” Vejin told Rojnews, an outlet close to PKK. “We also have our own agenda and policy.”
If a war does break out, “we as a political party can form a democratic front,” she added.
Vejin said any foreign intervention in Iran must consider the rights of its ethnic minorities, including the Kurds, who occupy Iran’s mountainous northwestern provinces.
“The agenda should take into account the characteristics of Iranian society and provide for the rights of all people from all the different national and ethnic backgrounds,” she said.
The PJAK co-chair said the US is squaring up to Iran in order to further its own interests – not to redress Iran’s human rights record or resolve the Kurdish question.
“We think war and disagreements between them are not in the interests of the Iranian nations,” she said.
“Their problems are not over a solution to the question of the Kurdish nation, oppressed nations, human, women, or youth rights.”
“We think Iran and the US are fighting for their own interests.”
Washington has been turning up the heat on Tehran since May 2018 when it withdrew from the 2015 nuclear deal and reimposed crippling sanctions targeting Iran’s economy and oil sector.
It then designated the IRGC as a terrorist organization and deployed an aircraft carrier group and B-52 bombers to the Persian Gulf.
Far from reining in its abuses, US moves against Iran have only made the regime more repressive, Vejin said.
“Army pressures on the society increased after [the IRGC] was put on the terror list,” she said.
“Iran will not give up its pressure on society. Poverty and unemployment levels in Iran and east Kurdistan are higher than ever.”
“Through militarizing and terrifying the society, the Iranian regime is showing it is not abandoning its flawed policies,” she added.
Ever since its emergence in 1979 the Islamic regime imposed discriminatory rules and laws against the Kurds in all social, political and economic fields.
The Kurds in Iran 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.
Estimate to over 12 million Kurds live in Iranian Kurdistan.
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