Just like the Kurdistan Region, the atmosphere in Iranian Kurdistan (Rojhilat) was unstable for Kurds, and her family was on the move again in 1989, this time they were resettled in Pakistan where Rez was born at a refugee camp in Quetta in 1991.
She spent seven years of her life in Pakistan before her family received news from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) that they would be relocated to New Zealand.
“We had no idea where it was, but we knew it was going to be somewhere safe, so my family moved to New Zealand in 1998,” Rez told Kurdistan 24.
Something was Unfair
After the fall of the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq, Rez and her mother visited the homeland for the first time since they were forced to flee. She was 13 years old at the time.
The Kurdish lawyer noted the challenges of seeing her entire family who was scattered across areas of the Greater Kurdistan, which is divided today by the borders of modern-day Iraq, Iran, Turkey, and Syria.
During her trip to the Kurdistan Region, Rez pointed to the general autonomy in the Kurdistan Region compared to the other parts of the Greater Kurdistan, particularly the Kurdish regions of Turkey and Iran.
“One particular event I recall vividly was when I was in the Kurdish region of Iraq, I had purchased lots of souvenirs of flags, Kurdish CDs, Kurdish posters, lots of things with Kurdish identity on them, and so, when I was traveling from Iraq to Turkey, all of these souvenirs and Kurdish flags and maps were confiscated by the Turkish officer,” she told Kurdistan 24.
“I was really confused, I didn’t understand why, and I wanted to understand, I was asking questions, and my mom literally had to drag me away from the Turkish officer when I was questioning why my things were being taken,” Rez added.
“I was really young, but even at that moment, I realized that something was not fair for Kurds and that something needed to be done about it.”