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SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH CENTER OF KURDISTAN CENTRE DE LA RECHERCHE SCIENTIFIQUE DU KURDISTAN (CRSK) Association de Loi 1901 RDA N°W212005346, 4 Rue de Saverne, 21000 DIJON FRANCE Dr Ali KILIC Président

Respect to Dr Abdoulrahman, Ghassemlou Academician, thought Universal Kurdish

Politician scientific of the Kurdistan Dr Ali KILIC Paris le 13 juillet 2012

Dedicated to the sympathy of Sêvê Evîn Çîçek

for Ghazi Mohammed and Mina Hatun

Twenty years ago in my doctoral thesis in philosophy of science I had quoted the letter from Dr. Abdulrahman Ghassemlou who had sent to Secretary General of the United Nations. I read live on Radio Free K-Voice of Kurdistan-Kurdistan Dengé all of this letter. I would like to point out that Radio Free K Dengé Kurdistan has spent without interruption from 1982 to 1985 four hours of programming per week in activities of PDKI, has organized dozens of conferences at the University of Dijon evening of solidarity with the PDKI . Kak Djelal Ghadani, Kak Mohammed Hossein zade have been invited on several occasions including those responsible for the section of Cinema with the PDKI

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in France particularly Battal Bathei at the projection of his films Nan u Azadi,1 çîyayên blind2 at the University Dijon accompanied by Kak Xousrow Abdulahi.

After my defense I presented a copy to the Office of PDKI in Paris in the presence Kak Djelal Ghadani and I asked Kak Xousrow Abdoulahi so that they can convey my doctoral thesis in philosophy of science to our dear comrade Dr. Abdulrahman Ghassemlou . It Djelal Ghadani who confirmed to me that Dr. Abdulrahman Ghassemlou had said "this Kurdish Dersime longer works for that section of the PDKI in France. "It is true that I have worked and I sent my regular activity reports to the Office of PDKI in Paris with all tape recorded and disseminated. I have formally joined the PDKI, but the light of our Republic of Mehabad Ghazi Mohammed, its philosophical and patriotic was the depth of my heart, my patriotism. I consider it a bridge between political and military armed struggle in Kurdistan and the Kurdistan Oriental North, on the basis of armed struggle for freedom and independence of Kurdistan in the departments of Kohctgiri and Dersime 1921 to 1938. these struggles are inseparable from the founding of our Republic of Mahabad. I would add that my family 302 people were shot and their bodies were burned and 52 children were taken hostage by the Turkish armed forces in 1937 they were shot and three of my family more particularly Alié Mirzalié Sîlemani are hanged the 15 November 1937 in El Aziz by the army colonialist and imperialist Turkish. The Major Turkish state had demanded that my grand pather Hemede Mirzalié Sîlemani deposits weapons. But he refused. The refusal of my grandfather was the radical sense of our revolution and the foundation of our sympathy for Ghazi Mohammed and the founders of our Republic. As a scientist and academician I bow to the memory of our martyrs in the first place Ghazi Mohammed and our dear Dr. Abdulrahman Ghassemlou of Dersime, Kotchgiri, Palou, Halabja.

I do not know why Kak Xousrow has not sent my thesis to Dr.

Abdulrahman Ghassemlou. Kak Xousrow without doubt, close to Ismail Axahi Sheqaqi3 (Simko) who played all the cards as Simko Agha who had signed the Turco-Soviet Treaty on behalf of the People of Kurdistan with kémalistes when the northern Kurdistan armed struggle is triggered against the fascist regime and Mustafa Kemal colonialist and imperialist against the Ottoman Empire for the independence of Kurdistan. Under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal, Ismet Inonu Fewzi Cakmak, Nureddin Pasha and Topal Osman laz our people have been massacred. On 13 July 1989 afternoon my brother informed me kurdistanien Mouftizade tragedy. In the Journal Regional de la Cote d'Or Le

1 Pain et liberté , réalisateur Battal Bathéi , Section Cinémathèque du PDKI 2 Des hautes Montages 3 Simko

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Bien Public4 had published my article. "On 14 July 1989 the French people celebrated the bicentennial of the French Revolution. It is a glorious page in world history. The revolution brought the words of orders and political demands on three fundamental principles. Freedom, equality and fraternity. But on July 13, 1989 is a date terrible for the people of Kurdistan. For a genius, a scientific of the Kurdish people, lovers of freedom, equality and fraternity, Dr.Ahdurrahman Ghassemlou, Secretary General of the Kurdistan Democratic Party of iran. was killed by the enemies of the people of Kurdistan in Austria. It is a cowardly crime committed by regimes Criminals.

Who is the Dr.A.Rahman Ghassemlou?

Dr. A. Ghassemlou was born in Kurdistan Oriental. From the age of 16 began â advocate within the Democratic Party of Kurdistan iran. He experienced the first Kurdish Republic of Mahabad founded in 1946 by Ghazi Muhammed. After the fall of the Kurdish Republic, thousands of Kurdish fighters continued to fight and to sacrifier.Le Dr.Ghassemlou was in exile for twenty years in Iraq . In the USSR and then Tszchekoslovaquie oǔ he earned the rank degree Doctor of Sciences Economiques.ll taught â Academy of Sciences Tszchecoslovaquie. ^ After the events of Prague he fled to Poland and then to Paris he taught the Sorbonne. In 1973 he became the Secretary General of PDK1. Why they killed Dr. A. R. Ghassemlou? First it was the largest organizer of the masses Kurds, a great diplomat, a theorist of political and social issues in the Middle East, a revolutionary fighter in the people. And then Dr.Ghassemlou was a great scientist Kurdish, an academician a great scholar contemporary and he saw the future of the Kurds and Kurdistan. He said that the Kurds name only one

4 Dr Ali KILIC , un grand scientifique kurde a été tué à Vienne ; in Le Bien Public le 14 juillet 1989,Dijon

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solution: "unite to defend itself by all means. Whether it be clear: this time, there will be no capitulation.La resistance of the Kurdish people will continue in cities and rural areas and will appeal to all forms of struggle. " The struggle of people of Kurdistan Oriental Indeed, the Dr.Ghassemlou, led the Democratic Party of Kurdistan iran as a wellorganized movement with his head in a revolutionary direction. In 1988 he identified two key tasks for the Kurds and Kurdistan.Premièrement, While continuing their resistance struggle, the Kurds must first establish itself as an independent factor on the political scene in the Middle East. Second, the Kurds must then work for the internationalization of the problem kurde.l1 we must raise the Kurdish question in all its dimensions, the problem of twenty-five million men and women who constitute a nation with the right â l ' self-determination.

The life and death of Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou (1930-1989)

MAN of PEACE and DIALOGUE

Dr Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou, the Secretary-General of the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan (PDKI), was born on 22 December 1930 in Ourmiah, Kurdistan. He went to university in Paris and later Czechoslovakia, had a Doctorate in economics and was an associate professor, having taught in Prague and Paris.

In 1941, the Allies invaded Iran in a ‘bridge of victory” operation that inevitably brought about the downfall of Reza Shah because of his relations with the Axis powers. A major political change was to take shape in the country. In Iranian Kurdistan the national movement came back to life and the PDKI founded on 16 August 1945, attracted young people in its masses. One of them was Abdul

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Rahman Ghassemlou – not yet 15 years old. On 22 January 1946 the Kurdish Republic of Mahabad came into existence by proclamation, but in December of the same year the imperial army with the help of the Western forces entered the city, and the killing and arrests that followed were as cruel as they were indiscriminate. The Republic had fallen; its President, Qazi Mohammad, and his close followers were taken prisoner, and then put to death on 30 March 1947.

Little by little the Kurdish people re-gathered their strength. The Republic of Mahabad may have been short-lived but in the collective memory it did not die. Running unlimited risks, the Kurdish leaders set about the vast task of protecting, educating and organising the population. Back from Europe in 1952, Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou devoted his energies to these clandestine activities for several years. In the next decade, he split his time between Europe and Kurdistan working in double harness: his university career and his repeated missions to Kurdistan.

In 1959, the regional context appeared to be more hopeful; in neighbouring Iraq, the monarchy had been overthrown, and Molla Mostafa Barzani (leader of the Democratic Party of Iraqi Kurdistan) had returned to his country after eleven years of exile in former USSR. The government in Baghdad accepted the principle of autonomy for the Kurdish population of Iraq.

On the other side of the frontier, the PDKI steeled itself to renew the struggle. In 1968-69, the armed conflict was rife in Iranian Kurdistan and the period ended in a bath of blood with the massacre of the Kurdish leaders – and yet, even then, Kurdish resistance managed to raise its head again.The vice-like grip in which the Shah’s armies were trying to hold it had to be broken. At the third Congress of the PDKI (1973), Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou was elected Secretary-general and at those that followed he was invariably returned to office.

During the years that followed, the prestige of the Pahlavi monarchy continued to wane. The White Revolution was questioned by experts in international affairs; the greedy demands and extravagant behaviour of the court were criticised in the press, and the SAVAK was active throughout the country with no social class being spared its baneful attentions. Clearly, the regime was doomed. If that happened, what should be the position of PDKI ? In view of the complex nature of the problems in the region that position had to be clear-cut. The Party had to reply unambiguously to a number of questions about its identity, its allegiances, its aspirations and its options. Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou and his aides drew up as coherent and realistic a programme as they could which may be summarised, in essence, as follows :

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- We are Kurds, we belong to a people that the vicissitudes of history have scattered over five states. A bond of brotherhood binds us, and will continue to bind us, to all other Kurds, wherever they live.

- We are the descendants of one of the oldest Indo-European civilisations. Our identity is defined by the fact that we have our own language and our own culture.

- We are the citizens of a country called Iran – on the same basis of the other peoples living on the Iranian territory : the Baluchs, Persians, Azeris, Arabs, Turkmens and so on.

- We are ardent defenders of the Declaration of Human Rights and the right of peoples as defined by the United Nations.

- We are for the freedom of worship and we respect all religions practiced by our co-citizens. Faith is an inviolable right. However, being resolutely modern in our outlook, we feel that a separation between the religious institutions and the state is desirable. A lay state is not, on that account, opposed to the faith or to those that serve it.

- For the living conditions of all to be improved, and customs from long ages past condemning women to a state of inferiority to be ended.

- To accelerate development in our country, it is necessary to establish a system providing free education of uniform quality throughout the country. A special effort should be made in the peripheral areas (Kurdistan, for example) that are clearly a long way behind.

- No attempt to leave poverty behind will succeed without the active participation of the people themselves. To feel concerned – so we believe – they have to feel free. Freedom of movement for goods and persons, freedom of association and freedom to form political parties or unions and to belong to such organisations are the indispensable preconditions for economic and cultural development. – For there to be trust between the population and the central authority, large-scale decentralisation is necessary.

- In Kurdistan’s case, that decentralisation has to comprise a charter of autonomy for the region whose boundaries would need to be precisely defined. Within this Kurdish space, the administrative languages should be Kurdish and Farsi, which would both be official languages of the regional and local authorities. Primary education should be in Kurdish whereas the two official languages should be routine practice in secondary school. Lastly, after so many years of violence, the Kurdish people could not accept a police force that was

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not manned by Kurds. It is only on these conditions that there would be any chance of lasting peace in Iranian Kurdistan.

- Lastly, the “kurdification” of the administrative and ‘production structures would demand major investment in the training of senior officials and staff and also – it goes without saying – a multidisciplinary university on Kurdish land.

In other words, what the leaders of the PDKI demand is genuine and effective autonomy. Unfortunately, as everyone knows, dictatorships hide behind pyramid-shape structures excluding all horizontal communication. Feeling themselves perpetually threatened (as indeed they are), they seek the support of foreign powers which, in the end, become their masters. Dictators are not free and they abuse the freedom of others. So the autonomy of Iranian Kurdistan would be utopian unless Iran made the change to democracy. Without democracy in Iran there could be no guarantee for autonomy in Kurdistan. Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou saw that these two concepts were inseparable and so they became the watchword of the PDKI: Democracy for Iran, autonomy for Kurdistan.

This policy statement in which chauvinism and sectarianism had no part won the PDKI the firm friendship of Third World countries and modern democracies alike. During his many trips abroad, Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou was always sure of a warm welcome. Many humanitarian organisations offered him help, eminent figures on the world stage in political and university life thought highly of him and human rights and religions militants encouraged him throughout his life. It was thanks to him that the Iranian Kurds were able to emerge from their isolation and make their voice heard in the international fora. Some of these sympathisers were surprised that the Iranian Kurds had “such modest” demands after such a bitter struggle. “It is really autonomy you want – nothing more ?” was a not uncommon reaction.

No secret clause was ever planned or hidden in this blueprint for autonomy because it was the fruit of long and profound thought about the world political context following World War Il. The Kurdish leaders took the view that major changes to frontiers were ruled out and that the general trend was towards the formation of large groupings rather that the fragmentation of existing units. In any case, once peace was restored, it would surely be natural for countries with common borders to seek to develop trade and cultural exchange. Therefore, in the long term, the existence of big Kurdish communities in various parts of the Middle East could be a positive factor in inter-regional relations. Everyone would stand to gain. It is well known that the big exporting countries pay considerable attention to the ethnic minorities, which often act as bridgeheads or relay stations in campaigns to win a foothold in new markets. In short, the Kurdish thinkers concluded that only the short-sighted could see

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ethnic, linguistic or religious diversity as an obstacle to development. In the future the big middle-eastern house would derive its energy from the many different elements of which it was built. This pattern was particularly true of Iran itself with its 45 million inhabitants of which only 40 % were of Persian origin. (Today Iran has over sixty million inhabitants). At that time, towards 1975, this type of thinking sounded at least advanced, not to say fanciful. The Kurds were still under the heel of the Shah, but nothing is eternal, dictators included.

One day in February 1979 Mohammed Reza Pahlavi finally gave up the throne. At that time the PDKI had a solid base and a real impact in Iranian Kurdistan. However, to run the territory properly and control its administration the police had to be removed and the army thrown out down to the very last man. This was the task of the “peshmergas” or partisans, who attacked army barracks and seized large stocks of arms and ammunition. Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou was then able to claim that, in a large part of Kurdistan, the Kurds were their own masters.

It was reasonable to hope that the Iranian revolution would have brought men to power able to realise that the interests of the central authority and those of the Kurds were compatible. Elections were planned and a new constitution was being written for the country.

Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou was elected to the Assembly of experts and made ready to carry to the capital the message of the Kurds – a simple message: there is room for all in this country where everything needs doing or re-doing. Imam Khomeini, unfortunately, saw things differently, he labelled the newly elected representative of the Kurds an “enemy of God” and declared a “holy war” on Kurdistan. This was in 1979. Sudden though it was, this call to arms was, in retrospect, not surprising. How, after all, could this grim gerontocrat with the cruelty of another age be prepared to give his attention to the history and wants of the Kurds ? How could Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou be expected to stay silent at the hostage-taking, occupation of foreign embassies and other terrorist activities launched in 1979 by an Imam who had recently returned from Neauphle-le-Château to sow the seeds of hate and insanity.

The Gulf War broke out the following September. Perhaps these unsubdued Kurds would be forgotten during this conflict between Iran and Iraq (1980-88). On the contrary, in fact, it cost them dearly, for their villages lay on either side of the frontier where the fighting was at its fiercest. They were accused, too, of being anti-patriotic : their settlements were destroyed and the people living there reduced to a wandering existence. The ultimate purpose of these crimes against humanity was obvious : to use the war as an excuse for exterminating a people whose authenticity was denied as strongly as it was proclaimed by the Kurds.

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Iran came out of the war with Iraq exhausted and the Imam at death’s door. The facts had to be faced and Tehran had to find a compromise in Kurdistan. For his part, Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou had been saying for years that the fighting had been imposed on him, that neither side would ever lose or win and that, sooner or later, the Kurdish problem would have to be solved across the negotiating table. After flying a few kites, Tehran issued a concrete proposal for a meeting in Vienna on 28 December 1988 and the PDKI accepted. The talks lasted two days, 28 and 30 December and the results must have been promising because it was agreed to hold another meeting the following January. On 20 January, at the end of the first round of negotiations, the representatives of Tehran were fully acquainted with the Kurdish demands. The principle of autonomy seemed to have been agreed. The details of how it was to be put into effect had yet to be defined.

Six months later, Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou returned to Europe to attend a congress of the Socialist International. Tehran tried to contact him again in order, he was told, to pursue the negotiations that had begun the previous winter. The PDKI accepted the offer sent to it. The meeting took place on 12 July 1989 in Vienna. The Tehran delegation was as before, namely Mohammed Jafar Sahraroudi and Hadji Moustafawi, except that this time there was also a third member : Amir Mansur Bozorgian whose function was that of bodyguard. The Kurds also had a three-man delegation : Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou, his aide Abdullah Ghaderi-Azar (member of the PDKI Central Committee) and Fadhil Rassoul, an Iraqi university professor who had acted as a mediator.

The next day, 13 July 1989, in the very room where the negotiation took place Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou was killed by three bullets fired at very close range. His assistant Abdullah Ghaderi-Azar was hit by eleven bullets and Fadhil Rassoul by five. Hadji Moustafawi succeeded in escaping. Mohammad Jafar Sahraroudi received minor injuries and was taken to hospital, questioned and allowed to go. Amir Mansur Bozorgian was released after 24 hours in police custody and took refuge in the Iranian Embassy.

Indignation was at its height. How, in this age, in the heart of Europe, could it happen for the representatives of a member country of the United Nations to open fire at point blank range on the representatives of a country with whom it was at war and had entered into peace negotiations? On 19 July two representatives of the political bureau of PDKI came to Paris to attend the funeral. At a press conference they announced, among other things, that the higher authorities of the PDKI had appointed Sadegh Charafkandi to perform the duties of Secretary-general. Sadegh Sharafkandi (who was also assassinated on 17 September 1992 by the Iranian terrorists) was in his fifties and had a doctorate in industrial chemistry from Paris University. He was

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Deputy Secretary-general of the Party up to the death of Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou .

The two murdered men of the PDKI were buried on 20 July in Paris in the presence of a throng of some two thousand people from all parts : Kurds and Armenians, Azeris and Turks, Persians and Europeans, poets and doctors, ministers and workpeople, representatives of humanitarian organisations and members of parliament. Leading the funeral procession, the peshmergas in their Kurdish resistance fighters’ uniform advanced with difficulty in the torrid heat of the Parisian summer. They were all there, all that had been able to travel on their crutches and in their wheelchairs, having come from the various capitals of Europe where they were recovering, as best they could, from the wounds received in the conflict. Tehran denied all connection with this triple murder and told Austria to look for clues in other directions than Iran. But the findings of the ballistics experts were conclusive.

In late November 1989 the Austrian courts issued a warrant for the arrest of the three Iranian representatives and the Austrian Government expressly accused the Iranian Government as having instigated the attack on Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou and the two other Kurds.

Thus died this man who was no warmonger but a man of letters, master of several languages and persuasive speaker. Overflowing with enthusiasm and energy, he was an intellectual of his time, this end of the twentieth century when the triumph of democracy seems really within reach.

The Dr.Ghassemlou wanted to safeguard our culture. The Kurdish language should be recognized as an official language in Kurdistan iran. The Kurdish children must be educated in their language. Political power must be decentralized and the internal affairs of Kurdistan run by representatives of the Kurdish people democratically elected. These claims of Kurdish masses are legitimate and complying with all the religious and international law: the right of peoples to self-determination.

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the leader the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan (KDPI), was born on 22 December 1930 in the Ghassemlou valley near the Kurdish city of Ûrmiyeh. He went to primary school in Ûrmiyeh and continued his Secondary school in Tehran.

Dr. Ghassemlou’s involvement in politics started early in life, and at the age of 15 he co-founded the Democratic Youth Union of Iranian Kurdistan. Due to political and national oppression in Kurdistan, his political activities mostly took a clandestine form.

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Ghassemlou attended university in Paris, and later in Prague. In Prague, he meets Helen Krulich whom he later married and they had two daughters together, Mina (1953) and Hiwa (1955).

He earned a Ph.D. Degree in Economics and was an Associate Professor in both Paris and Prague. He was teaching International Economics at the Vysoká s´kola ekonomická ("Prague School of Economics"), and thereafter Kurdish studies at Sorbonne University in Paris.

Dr. Ghassemlou authored several books, book-chapters and articles about politics and economics, and some of them have been translated into a number of different languages. His oft-cited work Kurdistan and the Kurds (1965) has been until present days consensually recognized as a valuable source, especially regarding the political geography of Kurdistan, the political history of the Kurds and traditional socio-economic relations in Kurdish society.

Besides being an acknowledged scholar and one of the greatest leaders of the Kurds, Dr. Ghassemlou’s excellent diplomatic skills earned him an international reputation, especially in Europe.

Those who knew and worked with him closely during his academic and political carrier, Kurds as well as Westerners, recall him as a man of quick wit and a person with a great sense of humour.

After several decades of political activity, and as the leader of the Kurdish people in Iranian Kurdistan, Dr. Ghassemlou was assassinated in Vienna by the agents of the Islamic Republic of Iran on July 13, 1989. Dr. Ghassemlou was in Austria to negotiate with Iranian representatives on Kurdish rights and self-government for Iranian Kurdistan.

Dr. Ghassemlou, a resolute advocate of the rights of his people and a determined leader who did not rule out guerrilla warfare, was also a man of peace and gave it a chance whenever possible. He went to the negotiating table in good faith. However, by assassinating the Kurdish leader, the Iranian regime lived up to the entrenched view among the Kurdish nation that it is not trustworthy, and that assassination is part and parcel of its political mindset and practice.5

5 Source: http://lawan.nu/ghassemlou

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Abdel Rahman Ghassemlou, murdered in Vienna on July 13th 1989, was in every way an exceptional man, both as leader of one of the oldest and most deeply rooted national liberation movements and in his personal magnetism – his international influence, his rare if not unique ability to express the traditions and the struggle of a thousand-year-old people in terms of the values of the late 20th century: freedom, democracy, internationalism. But he was little known to the public, and many will have learned simultaneously of his existence and of his death.

Ghassemlou was not a man of shadows, nor surrounded by mystery. The Secretary General of the Democratic Party of Kurdistan of Iran, war leader when necessary but political leader above all, he saw himself as a man of contact and dialogue. He was a passionate and tireless ambassador for this cause, who travelled all over the world to make it better known. But he was happiest sharing mud hut with his peshmergas at the bottom of some remote valley on the Iran-Iraq border, where he was constantly on the move, taking his library with him.

He liked good books and good wine – but could do without the latter more easily than the former – and was at ease at a Parisian table as in the spartan loneliness of the harsh mountain winter. At nearly sixty, he would have been 59 next December, he combined the serenity of an eastern sage with the dynamism of a youth, the curiosity of an encyclopaedist with the appetite of a bon vivant. As firm in his convictions as he was pragmatic in action, Ghessemlou seemed to reconcile without strain the toughness required for a political-military struggle and the elegant scepticism derived from his long academic career.

He had a doctorate in economics, loved history and literature and was an expert on Kurdish, Persian and Arabic poetry; he also readily quoted Victor Hugo, Baudelaire, Walt Whitman or T.S. Eliot. Warm, open, approachable, using irony and humour as easily as the six or seven languages he spoke and wrote fluently, he inspired the same reaction in everyone who met him. Sympathizers with his movement, intellectuals, doctors, ministers, ambassadors, politicians of left or right. All, even if recalling only one long-ago conversation, admit that they fell for his charm. Few people in this century could boast such unanimity.

Ghassemlou began his political life as a communist in the Iranian Tudeh party, in which he rose to a position of leadership. After 15 years in Prague teaching economics, he broke with the Communist Party in August 1968 over the Soviet intervention in Czechoslovakia. Though he abandoned the certainties of Marxist dogma he did not renounce his background. Rather, he examined its mistakes as he analysed the political situation to understand where and when justice had slipped into injustice and truth into error, or even horror, and to draw the moral conclusion. He was particularly well placed to know the difficulties of political struggle in a society that was “backward”, as he used to say, because, from

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being cut off from the world and deprived of its right of decision and expression, even when of access to its own culture. But he was not prepared to use underdevelopment as an ideological justification for all kinds of excesses, such as the cult of violence for its own sake, the cult of the leader in an organization, or the dictatorship of an organization over the people.

Nor could he adopt the idea that it is quite all right to use one language for public relations and the media, and then forget about it in the field. His great pride, as he was never tired of saying, was that as far as humanly possible the ideals of the movement were reflected in its everyday conduct. The PDKI has never mistreated prisoners, never used force against civilians, never taken hostages, never hijacked aircraft or planted bombs in the buses or markets of the “enemy” towns, let alone outside the war zone. Though by no means a pacifist, Ghassemlou opposed terrorism on principle, knowing that he paid a price for that and sometimes remarking, with just a hint of bitterness, that it explained why the media showed so little interest in the Kurdish question. “Any little group can become famous by taking hostages or planting bombs,” he once wrote, “whereas liberation movements which abstain from terrorism are generally ignored.”

In November 1979 Ghassemlou condemned, on the very first day, the seizure of the diplomats and staff of the US Embassy in Tehran. For him the liberation of Iran from American control, or the Third World from great-power imperialism as the PDKI programme put it, was the objective of a long-term political struggle which entailed freedom and democracy for all.

Yet, contrary to the accusations of the Tehran regime, Washington was not won over to the Kurdish cause. Though American diplomacy had indeed been active during the Kurdish war in Iraq (1961-1975), for geostrategic reasons which Dr. Kissinger explains at length, and quite cynically in his memoirs, it never lifted a finger for the Kurds of Iran. Ghassemlou himself was banned from entering the US until the month of his death, when he was for the first time granted a visa. Just before leaving for Vienna he was preparing very carefully for his trip to the US, where he hoped to do a great deal to publicise the Kurdish problem, though he had no great illusions about the likely political result.

He knew all too well that however great the sympathy felt by a certain educated world opinion for the Kurdish cause, (not only that of the 5 million Iranian Kurds but of the 45 million scattered through five countries) the cause would never mobilise the diplomacy of the great powers, nor even of the European democracies, since they were concerned primarily with their own regional interests. He had learned this during his frequent travels abroad, especially in Europe. For although generally respected, he was rarely welcome in official circles. At best, by playing on old friendships and exploiting his membership of

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the Socialist International, he would now and then secure a little humanitarian aid for his people. Or, by whispering in a generous ear, would manage to resolve a problem of special importance to him. Jean-François Deniau, a minister in the Giscard government, described with some emotion how Ghassemlou had at one time laid siege of his office to get the French government to back a new edition of the only French-Kurdish dictionary, which had long been out of print.

He was a realist. I remember him telling me once that at the end of a century notable for the assertion and precarious stabilisation of different nationalisms it was no good expecting to “explode the map to allow the Kurds to build themselves an independent state on the ruins of three others”. So he demanded autonomy for Iranian Kurdistan, not independence for the Kurds. But his opponents in Tehran assumed that this was only a hypocritical tactic, crudely disguising a separatism which dared not speak its name – the first step towards a “Greater Kurdistan” uniting the Kurds of Iran, Iraq, Turkey, even Syria and the USSR. On this point, “laymen” such as [former Iranian president] Bani-Sadr were in full agreement with the fundamentalist mullahs.

Ghassemlou’s death warrant was signed as early as 1979, when he was elected as the only self-confessed secularist in Iran’s “constituent” assembly. For security reasons he refused to go to Tehran. Ayatollah Khomeiny publically regretted his absence in a televised speech, adding: “What a shame. We could have arrested him and had him shot at once.” July 13th 1989, the day when Muslims celebrated the Id al-Kabir or “feast of pardon”, was also observed by Shiites as the 40th day of mourning for the Imam. Was that only a coincidence? Or did the murderers, disguised as peace envoys with an official mandate from [former Iranian president] Hashemi-Rafsanjani and passports signed by [former Foreign Minister] Velayati, come from Tehran deliberately to carry out the sentence on that ritual day?6

6 Source: “Dr. Abdoul Rahman Ghassemlou,” (Paris: Institut Kurde De Paris, Information and Liaison Bulletin, Special Issue 75 FF, July-August 1989), pp. 7-9.

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“the people of Iran expect from the United Nations to follow a path that will lead to the halting the execution of more political prisoners and the releasing of all prisoners of consciousness.”

November 18, 2009

Your Excellency,

As you are well aware, the regime of Islamic Republic of Iran was founded on the basis of discrimination and apartheid and has continuously and systematically violated human rights since its inception in 1979. As a sectarian state, the regime of Islamic Republic has subjugated its dissidents to various forms of violence and mistreatment.

For more than 30 years, Iranians have been subject to the Islamic Republic’s practice of systematic violence and oppression; however, the events in the aftermath of the 10th round of the theocracy’s presidential election in July 12, 2009 clearly illustrated the violent and oppressive nature of the regime in Iran. The regime’s brutal crackdown following the mass protests resulted in the death and imprisonment of thousands of innocent people, many of whom faced most barbaric forms of torture and are still kept in prison.

The oppression and violence continues across the country; however, in Iranian Kurdistan, aside from the regime’s double and even triple layer of discrimination and inequality in the last three decades, the aggression and oppression have dramatically escalated recently. A large number of Kurdish political and civil activists have been sentenced to long prison terms, and many of these prisoners have been sentenced to death. The latest case of political

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execution in Iranian Kurdistan occurred on November 11, 2009, when the 27-year-old political activist Ehsan Fatahian was executed in the city of Sanandaj. There are many other prisoners who are awaiting their execution orders and many more have been executed in the last few years.

Iran’s national groups in general, and the Kurdish people in particular, are disappointed by the fact that the Western countries, EU and US in particular, in their efforts to persuade the regime in Tehran to halt its enrichment of uranium, are ignoring the Islamic Republic’s gross violations of human rights against it people. Due to this fact, the clerical regime’s perception is that, in the absence of international criticism to its violations of human rights, it can continue to imprison and execute political activists without any international objections, particularly Kurdish political activists; hence, the people of Iran expect from the United Nations to follow a path that will lead to the:

- halting the execution of more political prisoners.releasing of all prisoners of consciousness.

Your Excellency, we hope that you will take serious and urgent action to save the lives of prisoners of consciousness in Iran. Along with this letter, I am also attaching a list of Kurdish prisoners of consciousness that have either been sentenced to death and waiting their execution or spending their lengthy unjust prison terms.7

March 31 is Remembrance Day in Eastern Kurdistan. On this day 65 years ago, President Qazi Muhammad – the President of the newly established Republic of Kurdistan – and two of his cabinet members were executed in public in the city of Mahabad by the dictatorial monarchy of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi where the Republic was first proclaimed.

Every year, on this day, millions of Kurds pay tribute to all the martyrs of Kurdistan who have paid with their lives for the liberation of Kurdistan and the Kurdish people. Dr. Ghassemlou once famously said “A nation in quest of freedom must be ready to pay the price of freedom.”Pictures below are the Martyrs Day ceremony in PDKI headquarters in Koya Sanjaq, March 29, 2012

7Mustafa,Hijri Secretary-general of Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan

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Theoretically and politically relevant qoutes from Dr. Ghassemlou’s magnum opus, Kurdistan and the Kurds, published in 1965 by the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences.

On the origin of nations and the Kurds as a nation: “The origin of modern nations is, in fact, connected with the rise of capitalism, and they become consolidated together with its progress. The prerequisites for further development of these nations lie, of course, already deep in the preceding social formations […] Nevertheless, the transition of a community into a nation depends on further conditions, the most significant of which are a common langauge, territory, economic life and psychic disposition which becomes expressed in the form of its national culture. [T]he Kurds do form a historical community and were known by this name as early as the 7th centry. And what are the main features of a nation in the case of the Kurds? Kurdish is the language common to all Kurds and the existence of certain differences between the various dialects changes nothing about this fact; dialectial differences have been preserved even in far more advanced conutries. The fact that as yet there exists no unified literary language is of greater importance, yet this state of affairs is not due to the Kurdish language being insufficiently developed nor its being a mere dialect of

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Persian, as is sometimes said. No recognized orientalist as ever doubted the existence and adequate level of development of the Kurdish language. […] The situation is caused chiefly by the non-existence of a uniform Kurdish writing. […] Kurdish is written in the Arabic, Latin and Cyrilic characters, which for its part is evidently due to the splitting of the Kurdish nation among different countries, and to the prohibition of school education and literature in Kurdish in most of these areas. Minimum provisions and minimum time – form the historical point of view – would be needed to create a uniform writing and thus a single literary Kurdish language. It follows that the common language as one of the features inherent to a nation is provided.”

On Kurdistan: “From time immemorial Kurdistan has been known as the motherland of Kurds, who have been living together in its mountains and valleys already for milleniums, and the splitting of Kurdistan by political borderlines between different states has changed nothing about it.”

On the right to self-determination and Kurdish statehood: “The Kurds, like any other nation, have the right to self-determination and the right to create an independet Kurdish state. The singularity of the Kurdish problem consists in the fact that it is not only seperation, but mainly union, which is the main issue in their case. The materialization of the right to self-determination is not, for example, in the seperation of Iraqi Kurdistan from Iraq, but primarily in its unification with the other parts of Kurdistan in Turkey and in Iran. In this case we are actually concerned with the right of the Kurdish nation to integrity within one state.”

Words of A. R. Ghassemlou

“We are Kurds, we belong to a people that the vicissitudes of history have scattered over five states. A bond of brotherhood binds us, and will continue to bind us, to all other Kurds, wherever they live.” “We are ardent defenders of the Declaration of Human Rights and the right of peoples as defined by the United Nations.” “[Our goal is that] the living conditions of all to be improved, and customs from long ages condemning women to a state of inferiority to be ended.” “We are for the freedom of worship and we respect all religions practiced by our co-citizens. Faith is an inviolable right. However, being resolutely

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modern in our outlook, we feel that a separation between the religious institutions and the state is desirable. A lay state is not, on that account, opposed to the faith or to those that serve it.”8

THE ASSASSINATION

Dr. Ghassemlou was a resolute advocate of the rights of the Kurdish nation and a determined leader. Although he did not see war as an end in itself, he did regard armed struggle as a legitimate means to defend the integrity of the Kurdish people.

Furthermore, given the denial of Kurdish rights by successive regimes in Iran and their use of military violence to crush any form of political organising in Kurdistan, Dr. Ghassemlou regarded armed struggle as a necessity to achieve national liberation. However, he always gave negotiations a chance, and willingness to negotiate to achieve peace was not regarded by him as a sign of weakness, but rather as part of strategy of nurturing a peaceful political culture based on rational deliberation to reach agreement and to find just solutions to political issues.

After several months of attempts to persuade the post-revolution regime to accept the political demands of the Kurdish national liberation movement, which at that time consisted of autonomy for Kurdistan and democracy for Iran, Dr. Ghassemlou soon realised that the new regime only tries to by time in order to rebuild its army with the aim to reoccupy Kurdistan. The reoccupation of Kurdistan marked the beginning of a long and bitter war.

Dr. Ghassemlou had been saying for years that the war had been imposed on the Kurdish people by the Islamic Republic of Iran. He argued, contrary to the understanding of the Islamic Republic, that the war was not a zero-sum game and that, sooner or later, the Kurdish question would have to be solved trough negotiations and peacefully, and Kurdish demands be accommodated within such a framework.

In 1989, when Dr. Ghassemlou was in Europe to attend a congress of the Socialist International, Tehran contacted him and proposed negotiations with the KDPI. The KDPI accepted the offer. The first round of talks took place on 12 July 1989 in Vienna. The Tehran delegation consisted of Mohammed Jafar Sahraroudi, Hadji Moustafawi, and Amir Mansur Bozorgian.

8 Source: http://lawan.nu/ghassemlou

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The PDKI had a two-man delegation; Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou and his aide Abdullah Ghaderi-Azar (KDPI representative in Europe). A Kurdish university lecturer in Vienna, Fadhil Rassoul, who had acted as mediator was also present in the negotiations.

On 13 July, the second day of the negotiations, at the place where the negotiations took place, Dr. Ghassemlou was killed by three bullets fired at very close range. His aide Abdullah Ghaderi-Azar was hit by eleven bullets and Fadhil Rassoul by five bullets.

The next day, at about 7:30 p.m., Vienna police discovered the bullet-riddled bodies of Dr. Ghassemlou, Ghaderi-Azar and Rassoul. Within hours, the police had recovered the murder weapons, detained two suspects and identified a third. The two detainees were Mohammad Jaafar Sahraroudi, later known to be a brigadier-general of the Revolutionary Guards and commander of the Guards’ Ramezan Garrison in Iranian Kurdistan, and Amir Mansour Bozorgian, an under-cover officer of Iran’s secret police, the Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS).

Moustafawi succeeded in escaping. Sahraroudi was questioned by Austrian police and released shortly after. Bozorgian, when he was released after 24 hours in police custody, took refuge in the Iranian Embassy.

Under pressure from Iran, the Austrian government decided to take the easy route: rather than investigate the murders and put the assassins on trial, the Austrian authorities sent the two suspects back to Tehran. They were even escorted to Vienna airport under police protection.

On 19 July the KDPI announces that then Deputy Secretary-General, Dr. Sadegh Sharafkandi, becomes the new Secretary-General. (Dr. Sharafkandi was assassinated too on 17 September, 1992 by Iranian agents in Berlin.)

Dr. Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou and Abdullah Ghaderi-Azar were buried on 20 July in Paris. Those who ordered the murder of Dr. Ghassemlou were:Ali Khamenei, Supreme Leader of Iran (who succeed Ayatollah Khomeini after his

death in 1989).

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Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, served as President of Iran from 17 August, 1989 to 1997 and is currently serving as the Chairman of the Expediency Discernment Council of Iran.

Ali Akbar Velayati, Foreign Minister of Iran from 15 December 1981 to 20 August 1997, currently an Advisor in International Affairs to the Supreme Leader.

Ali Akbar Fallahiyan, Intelligence Minister from 1984 to 1989, who is on Interpol’s wanted list in connection with the Assassination of Dr. Ghassemlou’s successor, Dr. Sharafkandi.

The Role of the Current President of Iran in the Assassination of Dr. Ghassemlou Austrian newspapers reported that Austrian authorities have classified documents showing that Iran’s current president, Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, may have played a key role in the assassination of Dr. Ghassemlou. The daily Der Standard reported that Austria’s Interior Ministry and the public prosecutor’s office are in possession of documents pointing to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s involvement in the assassination of Dr. Ghassemlou.

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It was Brigadier General Sahraroudi who had recruited Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as a team leader in the assassinations. While Sahraroudi commanded the “on-site” team that carried out the killings in the flat where the talks with the KDPI delegation were being held, Ahmadinejad was leading the support team that took care of logistics and escape routes. He received the weapons and ammunition for the operation from the Iranian embassy in Vienna, which were smuggled to Vienna in diplomatic pouches.

Ahmadinejad’s official biography notes that he was stationed in Ramezan Garrison near Kermanshar in iranian Kurdistan, from 1986, as an officer of the Revolutionary Guards and later joined the Special Brigade of the Guards, an elite force trained to carry out attacks beyond Iran’s borders.

In a separate development, Austrian Green Party leader Peter Pilz has said that he wants a warrant issued for the arrest of Ahmadinejad. Pilz said he had received information showing that Ahmadinejad allegedly travelled to the Austrian capital a few days before the slayings to deliver the murder weapons to the assassins. Austrian authorities have said the assassins entered Austria with Iranian diplomatic passports.

Pilz said that an Iranian journalist was contacted in 2001 by one of the alleged assassins, described as a former revolutionary guard. After having contacted the journalist, the assassin mysteriously died.

”The descriptions of the informant contained details of the scene (of the slayings) which could only have come from someone who was there,” Pilz said in an interview. He said the gunman’s account, which included “very convincing” evidence implicating Ahmadinejad, was turned over at the time to Austria’s federal counterterrorism agency.

The Austrian public prosecutor’s office told the press that the evidence will be reviewed in 2005. However, thus far the evidence has not been reviewed by the public prosecutor.9

Iran as a terror-sponsoring state: An overview The ideological dimension Revolutionary Iran is based upon the Islamic worldview and doctrine of the Revolution’s founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. This worldview radically changed the traditional Shiite worldview—which was previously passive and dictated passive anticipation of the “return of the Vanished Imam”—and

9 Source: http://lawan.nu/ghassemlou

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transformed it into an activist ideology supporting internal and external “revolutionary violence” alike. (It should be noted that this activist ideology is the “meeting point” of both Shiite and Sunni radical Islamic fundamentalism). Khomeini’s worldview was characterized by messianic redemption that can be achieved by adopting an activist ideology involving political or violent activity as necessary. The struggle is directed, first and foremost, toward “cleansing” Islamic society from within, first in Iran and later in the wider Islamic realm. The struggle does not end in the Islamic arena; rather it is designated to also eradicate “the root of all evil” – i.e. the superpowers which are the cause of world corruption. In this context, the United States, “the Great Satan”, plays a major role, while its ally, Israel, is defined as “the Little Satan”. Khomeini placed the Jihad [holy war] and shahada, or self-sacrifice, at the forefront of his ideology; it is therefore no wonder that in the 1980s, suicide bombings became the main feature of Iranian-inspired Shiite terror in Lebanon. From there, this form of violent action was “exported” to the Palestinian-Israeli arena and took the form of Palestinian terror. Khomeini’s successor, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei supports similar views and does not hesitate to express them publicly. A prima facie “division of rule” between conservatives and reformists who espouse more moderate approaches enables Iran to display a “smiling face” to the world, while at the same time continuing to use the weapon of terror. It should be noted that the reformists, who have suffered defeat at the hands of the conservatives in the struggle for power, have no influence on the ideology and policy of supporting terror as dictated by the conservatives. Khamenei, Khomeini’s successor, implements the latter’s worldview Ayatollah Khomeini: he added the ideological dimension to the support of terror .10 The principle of “exporting the Revolution” The aspiration to “export” the Islamic Revolution to the entire Moslem world (and even to human society in its entirety) is an integral part of the philosophy of the Islamic Revolution. Khomeini and his confidants sought to transcend the religious differences between Sunni and Shiite Moslems as well as national division, and strove to create a coherent, revolutionary Islamic force “that will comprise a billion Moslems”. From Khomeini’s viewpoint, this concept served to justify Iranian intervention in the internal affairs of other Islamic states and to advocate rebellion against their rulers by their inhabitants, while declaring that the rulers of these Islamic states “live as infidels and animals”. Iran has adopted a variety of means for “exporting the Revolution”: from presenting itself as a “role model”; through the use of terror and providing aid to extreme subversive

10 Politika-magazine.ru

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Islamic movements in Lebanon and the Gulf States, the Balkans, and Africa; to dispatching the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC, hereinafter: “the Revolutionary Guards”) to various places including Lebanon, where they have succeeded in establishing a “front-line base” of the Islamic Revolution. Propaganda activities serve as a principal means of “exporting the Revolution” and disseminating its values. They are carried out by various Iranian embassies, information delegations, and clerics, and also through “cultural centers” and mosques in various countries, including Western Europe. Moslem students from around the world go to Iran to study at its religious institutions, and some are recruited for both propaganda and terror activities. The subversive activities of pro-Iranian elements have wrought havoc in many Moslem countries. For example, Anwar Sadat’s assassins in Egypt mentioned Khomeini during their trial as the inspiration behind their actions. The late King Hassan II of Morocco indicated that Iran was behind the wave of unrest that swept Morocco in 1983. A series of suicide attacks in Lebanon against French, American, and Israeli targets was directed and inspired by Iranians, with the aim of ridding Lebanon of any Western presence as the first step in establishing an “Islamic Republic” in that country based on the Iranian revolutionary model. In recent years, the policy of “exporting the Revolution” apparently became slightly more flexible, and Iran frequently chooses to give greater weight to political and economic considerations. At the same time, the principle per se has not been abandoned and Iran continues to support Islamic terror organizations operating against both the United States and Israel, as well as against moderate Arab regimes. An Iranian stamp commemorating Khaled al-Islambouli, Anwar Sadat’s assassin: An official mark of support for terror against Arab regimes Involvement of the upper echelons of the Iranian regime in decision-making and the approval of acts of terror Terror activities, subversion, and the elimination of opponents of the regime abroad must receive the approval of the upper echelons of the decision-makers of the Iranian regime, including the leader, Khamenei. The trial of Iranian agents in Germany convicted of the murder of four Kurdish exiles at the Mykonos Café in Berlin, and the bombings in Argentina, are typical examples of the Iranian decision-making chain of command. The leader, the Intelligence Minister, and the Supreme Council of National Security (which includes the president) directed the operational apparatuses and approved the targets selected in both cases. In the past, former President Rafsanjani was also involved in that decision-making process. Today, decisions are made in this context without informing President Khatami beforehand, as he might oppose some of them. The majority of the decisions regarding terror are thus made today by the leader, Khamenei, the upper echelons of the Intelligence Ministry, and the Revolutionary Guards. Milestones in Iran's involvement in terror

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Since the Islamic Revolution in 1979, Iran has become notable for its no-holds-barred radical foreign policy, including engaging in terror, for the purpose of “exporting the Islamic Revolution” and advancing its political aims. The use of terror as a tool for achieving political interests is neither exclusive nor unique to Iran though; there can be no doubt, however, that Iran is the most prominent state in encouraging and employing terror to achieve its aims. For Iran views terror as an efficient tool, both a substitute and a complementary means in diplomatic processes; in Iran’s view, terror is a legitimate tool to be used in its struggle against all its adversaries. The Iranian security and terror apparatuses and the Iran-sponsored Shiite organizations, most prominent of which is Hezbollah, commenced their worldwide activities in 1980; since then, they have perpetrated hundreds of terror acts throughout the world. Iran also supports Sunni-Moslem (including Palestinian) terror organizations, such as the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which is almost totally dependent upon Iran. These organizations, too, have perpetrated hundreds of terror acts inspired and assisted by Iran. Iran does its utmost to avoid exposure of its involvement in terror activity and leaving incriminating “fingerprints” that would bring reprisals against it in their wake. It therefore customarily uses non-Iranian contact people and proxies, such as Hezbollah, to execute part of these terror acts (a method also used by Iran’s ally, Syria). Iran’s official bodies, including the Foreign Affairs Ministry, provide diplomatic cover for the activities of Iranian intelligence personnel, and they also handle issuing of forged documentation for terrorists belonging to other organizations. Despite these attempts, due to its far-reaching activities, Iran does not completely succeed in avoiding leaving “fingerprints”. There is much evidence linking it to terror outrages and pointing to its having been a leading terror -sponsoring state over the past twenty years. The blowing up of the Jewish community building (AMIA) in Argentina exposed Iran's involvement in terror abroad. It thus constitutes a good case study for understanding the characteristics of the Iranian support of terror. In the early years of Iran’s Islamic regime, the regime’s main thrust was stabilizing and consolidating its rule through the use of internal terror against the opposition. Also, the majority of terror attacks against foreign targets (American and British) were perpetrated on Iranian soil. A second milestone in Iranian involvement in terror occurred in 1980 with the outbreak of the Iran-Iraq war. During that conflict, the use of terror became a supporting tool in Iran’s war against Iraq on two levels: first, carrying out terror attacks against Iraqi targets inside Iraq and throughout the world; and second, attacking targets of countries identified as supporting the Iraqi war effort, such as France. A third milestone in Iranian involvement in terror was the arrival of the Revolutionary Guards forces in Lebanon in 1982 and the inclusion of local Shiites in terror activity inside Lebanon against Western targets and Israel, and also in terror attacks worldwide on behalf of the Iranians. At a later stage, Iran

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also developed contacts with Sunni-Moslem terror organizations acting against both Israel and moderate, pro-Western, Arab regimes. Characteristics of Iranian and Shiite terror Besides the traditional terror methods of skyjacking or targeting specific assassination victims, the Iranians have developed two main methods that have become the trademark of Iranian-directed terror: Suicide attacks – The Shiite terror organizations directed by Iran were the first to successfully use suicide attacks against Western targets in both Lebanon and Kuwait. The effect of these attacks was far-reaching: They brought about the withdrawal of the French-American multinational force from Lebanon and became the trademark of Iranian-activated Shiite terror. The Iranian media, and those of Hezbollah, customarily grant legitimacy to these actions in order to encourage the Palestinians to copy “the Lebanon model” by carrying out such actions. Hostage-taking – In the 1980s, the taking of Western hostages became the principal modus operandi for exerting pressure on Western and other countries in order to change their policies on the Iran-Iraq war and the Israeli-Arab conflict, and also for the purpose of freeing imprisoned Shiite terrorists throughout the world. Statistically, between 1980 and 1999, Shiite terror organizations and Iranian elements perpetrated 260 acts of international terror (this figure does not include Hezbollah actions against IDF forces in Lebanon and attacks against Iraq). Of these, 67 were acts of hostage-taking; 82 were acts of detonating explosive charges and car bombs; 12 acts of skyjacking / blowing up aircraft; and 97 assassination attempts, the majority of whose victims were Iranian exiles. Iranian / Shiite acts of terror were perpetrated in 32 countries on four continents: 57 in Europe, 173 in the Middle East, 23 in Asia, six in the United States, and one in Africa. The majority of these terror attacks (190) were perpetrated on the territory of Islamic countries in the Middle East and Asia, owing to the existence of an apparatus of local collaborators and extremist sponsoring organizations that actually perpetrate the acts or assist Iranian bodies in their execution. Targets of Iranian and Shiite terror The United States The US is perceived by the Iranian revolutionary regime as “the Great Satan”, as noted. It stands accused of four “fundamental sins”: its imperialist and exploitative character and its oppression of the Third World; its support of the former Shah’s regime; its support of reactionary Arab regimes in the Middle East; and its support of Israel and Zionism. The Iranian regime also perceives the United States and Western culture as the source of moral corruption. The majority of the devastating attacks launched against American targets in the Middle East has taken place in Lebanon (a series of suicide attacks against American targets – the embassy and the marines headquarters) and in Saudi Arabia. Two car bombs exploded in Saudi Arabia: one in Riyadh in 1995, in which seven people were killed, among whom were five US citizens; the second

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in al Khobar in 1996, near an American military base, in which 19 people were killed and over 500 wounded. In both cases, the attacks were carried out by Saudi Arabian elements supported by Iran. Cultivating hatred for the United States: a demonstration in Tehran in front of the former US Embassy [November 21, 2002,] www.iranian.com Terror against the United States: the attack against Khobar Towers [June 1996] (www.cnn.com) France Against the backdrop of its involvement in Lebanon, its close ties with Iraq in the past, and its hosting of Iranian opposition activists, France has also become a target of Iranian terror. Terror against France has comprised exploding a booby-trapped vehicle at the French headquarters in Beirut in 1983, and the hijacking of Air France aircraft both in 1983 and 1984. Iran has also created a terror network that operated inside France in 1985-1987, and was involved in carrying out 12 terror attacks in that country. Iran was also active against Iranian opposition activists who had settled in France, which involved assassination attempts, the last of which proved a success, when the Iranian Prime Minister in exile, Shahpour Bakhtiar, was assassinated. The campaign of terror against France proved effective for Iran: France removed its forces from Lebanon. Also the wave of terror attacks waged by the pro-Iranian network in France in the mid-1980s resulted in France expelling several exiles and Iranian opposition organizations from the country (including the headquarters of the Mojahedin-e Khalq, that were transferred from Paris to Iraq in July 1986). France also forgave part of the debt Iran owed it as a “goodwill gesture”. Nevertheless, Iran continued to carry out terror activities in France, which brought about a temporary termination of diplomatic relations in July 1987. Britain The Salman Rushdie affair put Britain “on the map” ofIranian terror targets. At the beginning of 1989, Salman Rushdie published his book The Satanic Verses, a parody that relates to the Quran as a fairy tale. As an immediate response, Khomeini published a fatwa, or religious ruling, in which he decreed a death sentence on Rushdie and called on all Moslem worshippers to act toward preventing the distribution of the book. Hezbollah, acting under Iranian patronage, announced that it regarded itself as committed to carry out the fatwa. Britain’s refusal to extradite Rushdie (who was forced to go into hiding for a lengthy period) to Iran and stop the book’s distribution, brought about a deterioration in relations and the severance of diplomatic relations between Iran and Britain. In addition, it brought about a wave of terror attacks carried out by Shiite Iranians or by elements operated by them, directed against British targets, retail outlets, and individuals who were engaged in the translation or the distribution of Rushdie’s book throughout the world. Six terror attacks were carried out in London, most of which were against stores in which The Satanic Verses was sold. Three attacks were carried out in Pakistan against libraries and British cultural centers, and additional attacks were carried out against British targets in Turkey (the explosion of the British consul’s car) and Malaysia.

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Attacks were also carried out against stores in the United States, Italy, and Greece which distributed the book. Following the election of President Khatami, new hopes emerged for the end of this affair, when Khatami announced that Iran “would not annul the fatwa, but it would not take any actual steps to implement it either.” However, conservative Iranian elements continue to announce their adherence to the fatwa: as recently as February 14, 2003 the Revolutionary Guards announced that the fatwa is “an historical and divine sentence” designed to protect Islam from its enemies, and therefore it cannot be annulled. Germany Iran, having maintained relatively good relations with Germany, assumed that it could use Germany as a station or base for terror activities. However, the exposure of these activities by the German authorities brought about a deterioration in the relationship between the two countries in the second half of the 1980s, and the consequent execution of a series of attacks against German targets, the main goal of which was the release of the Hamade brothers - Hezbollah terrorists who were imprisoned in Germany. In this case too, Iran used Hezbollah operatives as terror contractors. This situation enabled Iran to position itself as the “mediator,” seemingly trying to help the Germans resolve their problems with the Hezbollah organization. Despite the fact that Germany is perceived in Iran as one of the “friendlier” countries, the Iranians did not refrain from acting on German soil against exiles and Iranian opposition activists. Exposure of the involvement of the Iranian leadership in the elimination of members of the Iranian opposition in Germany (for instance, the Mykonos affair) brought about a deep crisis in the relationship between the two countries. The murder in Berlin On the night of September 17, 1992 the leader of the Kurdish Democratic Party in Iran (KDPI) and three other party members were murdered by the Iranian regime’s agents. Following are pictures of the murdered, and a brief summary of the event as appeared in an interview with a survivor of this incident, published on an Iranian Web site that belongs to activists opposing the regime.11 It happened on the night of September 17, 1992. At around 11, gunmen stormed Café Mikonos in Berlin, killing four members of the Kurdish Democratic Party of Iran: its leader, Dr. Mohammad Sadegh (Saeid) Sharafkandi, along with Fattah Abdali , Homayoun Ardalan, and Mohammad Nouri Dehkordi. Sharafkandi, who had replaced Abdolrahman Ghassemlou, (also murdered in Vienna a few months earlier), had traveled from Iraqi Kurdistan as a guest of the German Social Democrats.

11 www.iranian.com

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The assassins were of Iranian and Lebanese nationality and all had been trained at the special commando camp of the Revolutionary Guards in Rasht in northern Iran. The head of the "special unit" was Kazem Darabi, member of the Revolutionary Guards and the Intelligence Ministry, who received a double-life sentence (a total of 30 years according to German law). An international warrant was issued against Ali Fallahian whose reign of terror during his tenure as the head of the Intelligence Ministry included assassinations of the regime's opponents in Iran and abroad…". Additional countries Azerbaijan - assassination of the speaker of the Azeri parliament on September 1, 1997. Bosnia - thwarding Iranian intensions to hit UN forces stationed there. Israel Iran, and Hezbollah under its patronage, repeat the call for the obliteration and annihilation of Israel and grant this call religious and political legitimacy. In recent years, Iran has made its utmost efforts to carry out terror attacks directed at Israel. It is investing major efforts and a great deal of resources in activities directed against Israel from Lebanon, and Hezbollah has been the beneficiary of funding, the provision of weapons and closely supervised training provided by members of the Revolutionary Guards stationed in Lebanon. In addition, Iran maintains especially close ties with the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terror organization, whose nearly entire budget is provided by the Iranian regime. In addition, Iran maintains good relations with Hamas and other Palestinian terror organizations such as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command (PFLP-GC, Ahmed Jibril’s organization). In the course of the violent events taking place in the Palestinian territories, Iran has also established operational ties with elements of the Fatah organization, controlled by Arafat. It transfers money and directs attacks while attempting to ensure that it (Iran) maintains a foothold in the Palestinian territories (see chapter 3 dealing with the Iranian assistance to Palestinian terror). Beyond the ideological imperative of destroying Israel, promoting Palestinian terror also serves Iran's strategic-political goals. For Iran would like to see the failure of any chance of advancing a peaceful solution between Israel and its neighbors, and more specifically, between Israel and the Palestinians. Therefore, it makes every effort to escalate the crisis in the region and prevent any respite in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. For this purpose the high echelons of the Iranian regime were behind the attempt to smuggle a sizeable quantity of weapons into the Palestinian Authority (the Karine-A affair), with the goal of “exporting” the Lebanese model to the Palestinian territories and escalating the conflict. Beyond the encouragement of terror originating in Lebanon and in the Palestinian territories, Iran does not refrain from taking action against Israeli and Jewish targets abroad, and was behind (as the Argentinian intelligence report proves) the terror attacks directed against the Israeli embassy and

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the Jewish Community Center in Buenos Aires, attacks executed under the direction of Iranian leader Ali Khamenei in the early 1990s. Arab Targets Khomeini did not recognize the legitimacy of the majority of the Arab regimes, and perceived them as serving Western imperialism. This was particularly evident in his attitude toward the Gulf States; the latter soon became the chief target of the “export” of the Islamic revolution, affected by the use of the weapon of terror. The main thrust of terror activity was directed against Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, where the attacks were carried out by local Shiites, as well as against targets belonging to these countries throughout the world. In most cases the Iranians operated, as usual, through operational proxies, making it impossible to prove direct Iranian involvement. Terror attacks directed against targets in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States had several objectives: undermining the regimes, the purpose of which was to bring about their fall and the establishment of Islamic regimes in their stead; freeing terrorists who had been imprisoned in the Gulf States, or avenging the execution of terrorists; during the Iran-Iraq war, attacks were also carried out as a means of exerting pressure on the Gulf States to terminate their assistance to Iraq. Iranian subversive activity took place during the pilgrimages [hajj] to the holy sites of Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia. Instructed to do so in advance, Iranian pilgrims incited large-scale riots. Hundreds were killed—the majority of whom were Iranians—by the Saudi Arabian security forces. Approximately two years later, 16 Kuwaiti citizens were brought to trial in Saudi Arabia. They admitted to a series of attacks during the pilgrimage season of 1989, assisted by the Iranian embassy in Saudi Arabia. Following their execution, a series of revenge attacks was carried out in which six Saudi Arabian diplomats were killed in various places around the world (Lebanon, Turkey, and Thailand). Kuwait also served as a target for a series of attacks carried out by Hezbollah, in retaliation against the imprisonment of members of a Shiite terror network, some of them having been executed. The attacks were carried out in and outside Kuwait and comprised an attack on oil installations and the explosion of a car bomb near a hotel. In this same context, a Kuwaiti Airlines aircraft was hijacked in April 1987 en route from Thailand to Kuwait, and was forced to land in Mashhad, Iran. The hijackers, members of Hezbollah, demanded the release of the prisoners. Imad Mughniyah, who was behind the hijacking, is today in charge of Hezbollah’s military-terror activities. There is a large Shiite minority in Bahrain and therefore Iran regarded the country as having promising potential for subversive activity, which reached its height in 1996 in a wave of attacks directed mainly against Bahrain’s foreign residents. In June 1997, eight members of the Bahraini Hezbollah were apprehended and admitted to carrying out one of the attacks. Their interrogation shows that they underwent training in Iran, where they were provided with money and weapons in order to work toward overthrowing the regime in Bahrain. During the 1990s, Iran was

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involved in Turkey in the elimination of local journalists and intellectuals who opposed the “exporting of the Islamic revolution” to Turkey, and also in the elimination of Iranian opposition activists there. In the 1990s, the Iranians also supported the P.K.K. (a Kurdish organization in Turkey defined by the US State Department as a terror organization). It is not clear whether or not this support is still taking place today. At the same time, the Iranians did not hesitate to use the weapon of terror against a Kurdish organization opposed to the Iranian regime (the Mykonos affair). Iran also maintains ties with terror organizations in Egypt and North Africa. In recent years Iran has limited its subversive activity in the Arab world, but it still maintains ties with terror organizations in various countries, and is waiting for the right moment when domestic stability is undermined in order to act again. Attacks against Iranian exiles and opposition organizations In the wake of the Islamic revolution, many who opposed it were forced to leave Iran fearing for their lives, following a large-scale elimination campaign against the opposition activists of the new regime. However, Iran hounded the leaders of the opposition abroad, and Iranian and Shiite terror groups carried out a series of assassinations around the world. Particularly notable is the assassination of Shahpour Bakhtiar, the last prime minister under the rule of the Shah, in his Paris apartment, carried out by Iranian intelligence agents in August 1991. In 1995, the son of a key witness in the case of Bakhtiar’s murderers was murdered in Paris. Additional notable cases involving the murder of opposition activists took place in Austria, Switzerland, Italy, Pakistan, and Turkey. Inter alia, Iran also hounded and eliminated activists in Kurdish opposition organizations who have been engaged in promoting self-rule for the Kurds. Dr. Shahpour Bakhtiar, prime minister on the eve of Khomeini’s return to Iran Murdered in Paris in 1991 by intelligence agents of the Iranian regime At the same time, the conservatives in Iran, who are in charge of security and intelligence, continue to employ terror directed against Iranian citizens in Iran itself. Thus, at the end of 1998, Iranian citizens were shocked by a series of assassinations of intellectuals who were known for their opposition to the regime. Those who ordered these assassinations were senior officials of the intelligence ministry. Although the investigation led to the conviction of several planners and perpetrators, Iran’s legal system, governed by the conservatives, managed the release of the offenders from prison after a short period. The prime suspect in the affair, Said Emami, Deputy Intelligence Minister, “committed suicide” in jail after “drinking a detergent,” so that he would not reveal his superiors’ involvement.

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The assassination attempt against President Khatami’s close advisor, Said Khajjarian in March 2000, which resulted in Khajjarian’s paralysis (and which also resulted in the early release of the assassin) made it clear to the Iranian citizens that the reign of terror of the revolution’s early days had not come entirely to an end, and that criticism of the Islamic regime entailed a great deal of personal During the 1990s, Iran was involved in Turkey in the elimination of local journalists and intellectuals who opposed the “exporting of the Islamic revolution” to Turkey, and also in the elimination of Iranian opposition activists there. In the 1990s, the Iranians also supported the P.K.K. (a Kurdish organization in Turkey defined by the US State Department as a terror organization). It is not clear whether or not this support is still taking place today. At the same time, the Iranians did not hesitate to use the weapon of terror against a Kurdish organization opposed to the Iranian regime (the Mykonos affair). Iran also maintains ties with terror organizations in Egypt and North Africa. In recent years Iran has limited its subversive activity in the Arab world, but it still maintains ties with terror organizations in various countries, and is waiting for the right moment when domestic stability is undermined in order to act again. Attacks against Iranian exiles and opposition organizations In the wake of the Islamic revolution, many who opposed it were forced to leave Iran fearing for their lives, following a large-scale elimination campaign against the opposition activists of the new regime. However, Iran hounded the leaders of the opposition abroad, and Iranian and Shiite terror groups carried out a series of assassinations around the world. Particularly notable is the assassination of Shahpour Bakhtiar, the last prime minister under the rule of the Shah, in his Paris apartment, carried out by Iranian intelligence agents in August 1991. In 1995, the son of a key witness in the case of Bakhtiar’s murderers was murdered in Paris. Additional notable cases involving the murder of opposition activists took place in Austria, Switzerland, Italy, Pakistan, and Turkey. Inter alia, Iran also hounded and eliminated activists in Kurdish opposition organizations who have been engaged in promoting self-rule for the Kurds. Dr. Shahpour Bakhtiar, prime minister on the eve of Khomeini’s return to Iran Murdered in Paris in 1991 by intelligence agents of the Iranian regime At the same time, the conservatives in Iran, who are in charge of security and intelligence, continue to employ terror directed against Iranian citizens in Iran itself. Thus, at the end of 1998, Iranian citizens were shocked by a series of assassinations of intellectuals who were known for their opposition to the regime. Those who ordered these assassinations were senior officials of the intelligence ministry. Although the investigation led to the conviction of several planners and perpetrators, Iran’s legal system, governed by the conservatives, managed the release of the offenders from prison after a short period. The prime suspect in the affair, Said Emami, Deputy Intelligence Minister, “committed

34

suicide” in jail after “drinking a detergent,” so that he would not reveal his superiors’ involvement. The assassination attempt against President Khatami’s close advisor, Said Khajjarian in March 2000, which resulted in Khajjarian’s paralysis (and which also resulted in the early release of the assassin) made it clear to the Iranian citizens that the reign of terror of the revolution’s early days had not come entirely to an end, and that criticism of the Islamic regime entailed a great deal of personal risk. The Iranian intelligence ministry: responsible for carrying out terror attacks abroad Summary An analysis of Iran’s terror policy in the 24 years that have passed since the outbreak of the Islamic revolution shows that despite shifts in emphasis and arenas of activity, Iran has not abandoned terror as a strategic weapon and still regards it as a legitimate course of action for promoting its interests, both domestic and abroad. For this purpose, the most important governmental mechanisms are being mobilized and substantial resources are being invested. Iranian terror activity is carried out cunningly, with Iran trying not to leave “fingerprints” which might identify it as being behind terror activities. Therefore, Iran uses various organizations, mainly Arab ones, for carrying out activities that it initiates and supports. In order to reinforce this policy of concealment, the Iranian leadership, in its public statements, is reserved vis-à-vis terror activities and condemns them, even going so far as to present itself as having been a victim of the Mojahedin-e Khalq perpetrators of terror. Iranian terror is motivated in part by ideological considerations, in the spirit of Khomeini’s heritage to which his successor Ali Khamenei is committed. Therefore, in certain spheres (such as the struggle against Israel which is perceived as an ideological imperative), the degree of Iranian flexibility is slight. Iranian terror is frequently triggered by utilitarian considerations; hence, terror activities are carried out based on calculations of gain and loss. Often Iranian terror serves as a tool for blackmailing victims, obtaining political aims, or for obtaining specific goals (such as the release of imprisoned terrorists, preventing the distribution of Salman Rushdie’s book, and so forth). As a rule, it can be said that in the overall balance of examining the results of terror activity so far, Iran may (justifiably) reach the conclusion that in gain and loss calculations, terror is worthwhile. The Iranian “balance sheet” on this issue shows considerable success in achieving political goals in proportion to a relatively low price, which it was forced to pay in return, at least until now. Therefore, it may be assumed that in the absence of a resolute and united international response to Iran, it will continue to use terror for promoting its objectives in the foreseeable future. 12

12 www.kdsf.se

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BBC Persian Service’s Behruz Yusef-zad in an interview with Dr. Ghassemlou (in late 1980s)

BBC: What changes have occurred to you in the years of your struggle? Dr. Ghassemlou: One of the fundamental issues for me that I have fought for from my early youth has been the eradication of ethnic and nationalist oppression. On this stand point, I have not changed. Of course I have piled up plenty of experiences in my political life, and in general I have become more realistic. I have always been optimistic in my life, and been able to preserve my self-esteem in the harshest circumstances, and I am still unchanged. I am obsessed with reading; I follow almost all the magazines, foreign and Iranian newspapers in Kurdistan, and I am also very interested in reading scientific novels and books; however, I can not imagine myself without poetry. In Kurdistan, they arrange poetry nights and I contribute poems. I have a deep interest in classical Iranian poetry such as Hafez, Saadi, Khayyam, Baba-Tahre Oryan and Ferdosi. I am also interested in the classical Kurdish poetry especially Goran’s poetry, a 20th century Kurdish poet, and also Ahmadi Khani’s poetry, a prominent classical Kurdish poet. Among the modern poets, of course Nader Naderpour and Ahmad Shamlou are my favourites, and I have their poetical works. I also read Parvin Ehtesami’s works because I think her poems are much relevant to my life in current circumstances. Of course, you know, political struggle especially if one is accountable, and the existence of the internal conflict prevents one from devoting her/his time to hobbies and in this case my interest in poetry and music, which is problematic. One of the difficulties of my life is the loss of my close comrades which is the biggest discontentment of my life. If I could decide on my own, I like to pursue further knowledge, and keep myself busy with cultural works and literature. But since I am in Kurdistan, I feel a sense of responsibility to the people of Iran and Kurdistan. BBC: Where do you think you will be or do in the next 10, 20 or 30 years? Dr. Ghassemlou: In the current circumstances that we are situated predictions are hard. I like to engage in further scientific works and writings in years ahead if I can. Now, it has been 40 years that I am involved in the struggle. I like to put my experiences in writing; however, in any situation, I like to be among the people, and in the current struggle distancing from the people is very hard. I hope that things change in such a way that our country becomes independent and safe. It is in this case that I like to spend my retirement in one of the Kurdish villages, preferably Ghassemlou – you might not know that there is a village

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with such a name, which I am named after – and write and read until the end of my life.

During an evening of solidarity with the Kurdish people that our Committee had organized â Dijon October 20, 1984, we projected two films about the struggle of Kurdish people in Iran to inform 1'opinion French public. We note that the war declared by the Iranian regime to the oppressed people of Kurdistan. With ongoing. For ten years, cities, villages of Kurdistan fall prey to guns tanks. helicopters, assault, Phantomes the Khomeini regime. Thousands of Kurdish civilians were killed or wounded. Hundreds of homes were destroyed. Before the assault. Without pitiés government forces, tens of thousands of people fled their homes and took refuge in the mountains. Faced with the legitimate grievances of the people of Kurdistan's regime Khomeini wrote 1st Dr. Ghassemlou in his No "message of 24 April 1983. "N'oppose only one answer: the ball guns and bombs. L has not only destroyed all political freedoms: It does not even respect the basic rights of man. Our homeland is a vast prison minorities..) The Khomeini regime in Kurdistan enforces a policy of genocide. In addition to the massacres of population in rural areas, killing civilians is increasing in the cities since the start of the offensive. "13 5

This explanation of Dr. Ghassemlou poses a fundamental question: Who killed Dr. Ghassemlou and Ebdula Qadirî Azer? It is a question that must meet the Political Directorate of PDKI. We believe that this cowardly assassination was organized by the enemies of the people of Kurdistan. Not only against Dr. AR Ghassemlou and his comrades but also against the Kurdish nation. Studies on the massacre of our comrades confirm that the assassination was aimed directly the independence of our nation. "We will never accept, any government, 13 Message du Dr.A.R. Ghassemlou aux Organisations internationales et humanitaires, aux Personnalités, à l’opinion publique de tous les pays du monde

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aid tied to conditions unacceptable to our people, because we love and we are proud of our independence. We said Comrade Ghassemlou will never accept that someone dictates the decisions we must take, even if we go for support. This independence is a fundamental principle of our party, and we did [against exchange nothing " The people of Kurdistan will resist The people and the Kurdish Democratic Party of Kurdistan iran have lost their revolutionary leader. But Dr Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou and Ebdula Qadirî Azer we let a political party responsible, democratic and humanitarian Comrade Ghassemlou has always refused on principle and in practice any act of terrorism. In a speech al'institut Solidarity with Latin l’Amerique and Africa, in Madrid on October 6, 1988. Comrade Ghassemlou said "We have an urgent need of moral and political support of the international community. A Kurdish proverb says "One enemy is too miles and friends is not much." Unfortunately, the Kurds have many enemies. That is why we are seeking "friends." In the light of philosophical and political life of Dr AR Ghassemlou, we demand the same thing as he asked in his message dated 11 May 1981 from his Mahabad "Dear comrade François Mitterrand, (We are confident that relations between the P5 and the PDKI become a [future even closer and confident and that state and the french people will actively support the struggle of Kurdish people." 19 years after the People of Kurdistan Oriental (Iran) triggered a general strike in Kurdistan and the Kurdistan People condemned the assassination of their leader All stores and shopping malls are closed in eastern Kurdistan. The 19th anniversary of the assassination of the leader of the Kurdistan Dr Abdoulrahman Ghasemlou” Iranian securities forces have detained a large number of Kurds following a general strike on the 19th anniversary of the assassination of the Kurdish leader Dr. Abdulrhaman Ghassemlou. Since July 14, at least 86 Kurds have been detained in the city of Bokan. These individuals were later sent to prison in the cities of Uromieh and Miandoab. The Islamic Republic of Iran has also started a massive confiscation campaign of satellite TV dishes in the cities of Iranian Kurdistan. In the last two days, thousands of dishes have been confiscated by the Iranian security forces. In addition, the security forces have padlocked hundreds of Kurdish shops in the cities of Piranshahr and Oshnavieh, thus deepening the existing economical distress in the Kurdish cities. The Kurdish people in Iranian Kurdistan embarked on a general strike to condemn the state terror of Islamic Republic and, in particular, the assassination of the Kurdish leader Dr. Ghassemlou by the agents of the Islamic Republic on July 13, 1989. Dr. Abdoulrahman Ghasemlou and his aides Abdollah Ghaderi Azar and Dr. Fazel Rasoul were assassinated by the agents of Iranian regime on July 13, 1989 while negotiating with representatives of the Islamic republic of Iran in Vienna, Austria. Dr. Ghasemlou was General-Secretary of Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan (KDPI). KDPI is concerned about the fate of the detainees. Given the

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Iranian regime's past behaviour, we know that the detainees will be subject to severe torture and even face arbitrary execution. Therefore, we call upon the International Community to condemn the Iranian regime's unjustified and violent response to the peaceful protests by the Kurdish people. We also call upon the International Community and human rights organisations to put pressure on the regime to release the detainees.”6 In our letter to Nicole Borvo, for the liberation of our brother Sherko Cihani we mentioned the speech by Secretary of the PDKI kak Mustafa Hejri said " Firstly, States under the domination which are the Kurds are now as in the past States totally alien to the democratic standards, respect for human rights, the rights of peoples and those of minorities. In these countries, any aspirations of oppressed peoples, including the Kurdish people, is suppressed without thank you in the blood, under various pretexts, including that of combating separatism. Since the advent of the Islamic Republic in Iran, an additional pretext is used to justify repression against the Kurdish people in Iran. It's Imam Khomeini in person, describing the Kurds of Iran whole "children of Satan" and the leaders of the Kurdish movement of "enemies of God," proclaimed on August 19, 1979 Jihad (holy war ) Against the Kurdish people of Iran. Thus, the new Iranian authorities have supplied shamelessly in Kurdistan to ruthless massacres, destruction of Kurdish villages, in terrorist acts against the leaders of Kurdistan. In addition, these States stubbornly opposed to any possibility of resolving the problem through dialogue and a peaceful manner, leaving the Kurds other means than the use of armed resistance to defend themselves. In this area, military superiority, economic and technical cooperation of these states has meant that for nearly a century, despite the bravery and heroic sacrifices of Kurdish fighters, the advantage is still the government forces. There is another obstacle to internal and regional playing against Kurds: these are the tensions, disagreements and divisions between the ruling Kurdish forces, most often leading to bloody clashes and long-term, bringing serious blows their liberation movements. These clashes are mostly the result of machinations and manipulations of the states in the region, sometimes reach a point where Kurdish forces forget their fight against the states that dominate and devote their energy and all their efforts in battle against the Kurdish party. These wars inter Kurdish them sometimes lose significant opportunities. Secondly, the external obstacles: the geopolitical situation of Kurdistan and the place it occupies the sensitive Middle East (itself constituting one of the most sensitive regions of the world) that the plight of the Kurdish people was In the past, a kind of toy between the former Soviet Union and Western countries. Today, the pursuit of their own mercantile interests, Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan Office of International Relations In Kurdistanmadia Western countries are conducting the same game vis-à-vis the Kurds. This Western

39

policy does not stop there: with the technical means and military are providing very destructive to the States, these countries are indirectly involved in the barbaric repression against the Kurdish people. "14Regarding the value of the letter of Dr. 'Abdoulrahman Ghassemlou that I sent to direct and read the time on the Voice of Kurdistan-the Radio K FREE. The Letter of Abdoulrahman Ghassemlou, Secretary General of the Democratic Party of Kurdistan of Iran to Mr Javier Perez De Cuellar, Secretary General of 1'ONU about 1'acceptation of resolution 598 of the United Nations Security looms particularly important in the politics of paix. The second source is the Kurdish people himself leading a revolutionary struggle for the right to self-determination and who do not have any chemical weapons. "For nine years, the Islamic Republic imposes a war on the Kurdish people of Kurdistan of Iran unintended lui.En by March 1979 - this begins with a local clashes to transform wrote Dr. Ghassemlou in August of that year, total war affecting any territory of Iranian Kurdistan, which has more than seven million inhabitants. She has done up to now more than 40 000 civilian casualties and hundreds of thousands homeless, reduced at, wandering " The armed forces of the Islamic Republic, by the use of modern weaponry and sophisticated, according to Dr. Ghassemlou have destroyed dozens of Kurdish villages and caused extensive damage to the economic centres and the urban population. To suppress the people The central government has deployed an army of 200 000 men, dissémines bases in 3000, settled in villages and mountains. "15 8 "A current c 1'heure this region is completely militarized and transformed into a vast barracks." So that "the claim of the people of Kurdistan of Iran are very simple: 1'autonomie within 1'Iran, which are recognized in the United Nations Charter. " "When on July 18 this year, the Iranian government has accepted the resolution 598 of the UN Security Dr.Ghasemlou I would add that the Democratic Party of Iran, who directs the movement of the Kurdish people of Iran, welcomed welcome this decision. From the beginning of the Iraq-Iran conflict "PDKI" took action to 1'arret of hostilities and restoration of peace, denouncing this senseless war, as contrary to the interests of the peoples of both countries. While supporting the end of hostilities between the two belligerents, the PDKI, entant that responsible political party, "declares that the war is not ended in our country. As long as the legitimate demands of the Kurdish people will not be met, 1'ensemble of 1'Iran and borders Iran-rakiennes does not know peace. " The truth is that not only our country Kurdistan, but also our world is threatened by a danger he never experienced during its history. The research scientists from different countries and those of experts from 1 UN enjoys great authority certify that 1'utilisation even a part of stocks of nuclear 14 Discours du Secrétaire Général du PDKI à Paris l’Assemblée Nationale de France le 30-05-2000 15 Lettre du Dr A Ghassemlou , cité par Dr Ali KILIC , la Classification des Sciences et l’Informatique, Fondements philosophique de l’Informatique, Thèse de doctorat en Philosophie des Sciences ; Université de Bourgogne ; le 19 décembre 1988

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weapons would have a truly monstrous and for 1'humanite living nature of our planet. In his letter s'adressée Javier Perez de Cuellar Dr.Ghasemlou, Secretary General of the PDKI a very clear policy fight of his party in the following manner: "Right now you are trying to restore peace on the frontiers Iran-Iraq, which is also our objective, be aware that it is impossible for peace to be effective in this region as the war in Iranian Kurdistan continues, even the governments of a successful two countries agree. Indeed, hundreds of kilometers of common borders the two countries were held from coast by the Iranian Maquisards of the Democratic Party of Kurdistan of Iran. Some thousands of Peshmerga cabales will always threaten peace in this region (.) To ensure a lasting peace and security in this region, it is necessary to take into consideration the conditions that will ensure peace in Kurdistan, and within 1'application of resolutions 598, it is essential that this should be an integral part of the negotiations. " So in these conditions extremely dangerous leretablissement of peace is it possible without taking into account the reality of Kurdistan? At the time or the Secretary General of 1'ONU announces cease-fire between Iraq and 1'Iran at the same time the war continues against the Kurdish people by 1'armee of Iran and Iraq? How can we explain the limits of war? "We declare clearly that in the event that our proposal was not taken into count, your efforts in favor of peace written Dr.Ghasemlou, could not be crowns a complete success. The responsibility for this failure would then 1'Organisation United Nations. " We believe that before this situation the responsibility of politicians, men of State scientists and philosophers is a grandit.II ethics and its principles regarding world peace that regionale.L authority of science must be primarily uses the principles of 1'ethique of science among 1'opinion world. The ethique of science is not enough even to her nest and unable to perform the function of most of the regulator - scientific and philosophical or political. To be efficase, ethical principles of science must not only denounce war criminals, to translate the will for peace of peoples, but also to fight against the militarization of science reflecting the attempts of imperialist circles. That is why criminals Chemical and Nuclear War are not only colonialists and fascists Iraqi, Iranian and Turkish, but they are imperialist countries that breed wars. Because the war is not over. Resolution 598 of the Security Council 1'ONU is a game in the new division of Kurdistan. Without resolving the question of Kurdistan no peace in the Middle and Near East. First proposed by the resolution 598 of the Security Council 1'ONU? What is the policy of Iran and Iraq in terms of national and democratic rights of Kurdish people? What will be the responsibility of 1'ONU insofar as the Kurdish political parties are not involved in negotiating the settlement of peace? This is not the content of mutual relations between the imperialist countries with 1'Iran 1'Irak and Turkey? Who can prevent the war if the Kurdish people had decided to continue the struggle for freedom and 1'independance Kurdistan?

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To answer these questions we will consider as a first step, originality of resolution 598 of the Security Council 1'ONU, and then the policy of Iran in Iraq and Turkey and then the responsibilities of scientists and intellectuals must be beside the people of Kurdistan and all the oppressed peoples of the world.The proposed Security Council resolution 598 of the Security Council 1 UN. The resolution asks "that as a first step on the path of negotiated settlement, 1'Iran and 1'Irak cease fire immediately, stop all hostilities on the ground, at sea and in the air and immediately withdraw all their troops on borders recognized at the international level. "Dictator Saddam Hussein accepts this proposal as" total and unconditional withdrawal of troops on the borders recognized at the international level; (from the speech pronounced on 17 July 88) ", but which can have confidence this fascist dictator Saddam Hussein who proposed "¬ non-interference in internal affairs, respect for the choice of another party" if it has prepared openly genocide of Kurdish people in Iraq and Iran? "In these conditions, the efforts of Your Excellency to the achievement of resolution 598 are of particular importance," concluded Sayed Ali Khamenei, President of Iran reactionary. According to the dictator Saddam, "1'Irak and 1'Iran must play a positive role in restoring stability and security in the Persian Gulf region." This represent a total hypocrisy and a fascist demagoguery, as the three dictatorships are the real cause of 1'insecurite in the region these are the dictators who practice genocide of the Kurdish people. If we look good from the viewpoint of economic interests of capitalist countries 1'article 7 and 8 of Security Council resolution on 1'ONU is quite clear: "7. Recognizes 1'empleur damage caused during a conflict, and that efforts needed for reconstruction, with adequate international assistance after the conflict ended, and in this regard requests the Secretary-General to appoint a group of 'experts to examine the question concerning the construction and present a report to the Security Council S. Also requests the Secretary-General, in consultation with 1'Iran and 1'Irak " Regarding the proposals are PDKI,First, the result that this war really has no meaning. Secondly There are no casualties that can not mesurer. But when the Kurdish people, it is sacrificed by the very openly fascist and imperialist forces and the Kurdish people who leads a fight against 1'Irak and cons 1'Iran know-t it these borders desclavage "internationally recognized" that aims to new division of Kurdistan? This means that governments Iraqi, Iranian, Turkish, Syrian are ready to massacre the Kurdish People. Thirdly "to send a group of observers 1'Organisation United Nations to verify, confirm and monitor the cease-fire and withdrawal of troops and further requests the Secretary- General to undertake the necessary measures, in consultation with the parties, and present its report to the Security Council but the United Nations delegation did check the Halabja massacre and chemical weapons used against the Kurdish people? And the Secretary-General he undertook "the necessary

42

measures in consultation with organizations Kurds? They presented his report the Iraqi armed forces and on Iranian soil of Kurdistan? Basically the truth of these things is simple.Si the fascist military dictatorship in Turkey opposes al'envoie a commission to Iraq to investigate 1'emploi of chemical weapons by army of Iraqi , then it means that the Turkey had also used chemical weapons against the Kurdish people by 1925 and then 1937 - and 1938 and currently the near Geneva two Turkish factories producing chemical weapons at the time of the use of chemical weapons Turkey has sold chemical weapons in Iraq and Iran. That is why the Turkish government was against 1'envoie a mission of experts to examine the Kurdish refugees in Turkey? "If the Turkish dictatorship is so over the health of Kurds, 1'Humanite writing, we do not see why it wants to prevent 1 UN to share his optimism." This obviously raises questions of political and philosophical on the issue the scientific responsibility of scientists, researchers, intellectuals and political leaders. I think our time is the time is to atomic nuclear and computer. It generally date, the debut of the scientific and technological revolution in the middle of XX.siecle without catch against the truth, could include a more precise date, a date which is a shame this time the creation that is human civilization, that of atomic exploisions of Hiroschima and Nagasaki, the Vietnam War must be added the genocide in Kurdistan. This raises the responsibility scientific and philosophical philosophers address these crimes and also the responsibility of scientists of the twentieth century to the utilisation technology of nuclear weapons against the oppressed peoples including the people of Kurdistan. From the viewpoint of scientific responsibility and 1'ethique of science, philosophers have stains resolve; analyse the concrete situation of the world, ending the collaboration of philosophy with the reactionary, very distinguished radical philosophy of politics to inform the stains of philosophy at the theoretical and practical, to determine the norms and principles of ethical values and philosophical face of genocide of peoples and to act with the principles of 1'ethique science, develop 1'humanisation science. In this sense Dr Abdoulrahman Ghaessemlou as a scientist and academician was available to the peace for the future of the people of Kurdistan. It is the knowledge of his philosophical thinking humanist. Secondly we believe that the scientific practice a double meaning: On the one hand science modifies the conditions of life and 1'homme. It did change only objective and subjective conditions, but the means, instruments of transformations of society. On the other hand, 1'utilisation technological knowledge, science remains in the hands of the ruling classes of colonialist and imperialist states who share the Kurdistan they use to the political domination of the war, to maintain the colonialist and fascist regimes . These are crimes of genocide and war crimes committed against the people of Kurdistan and Dr A Ghasemmlou fought against these practices. In this connection, Heidegger example, scientists who worked or Hitler is a glaring example. All the world

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knows that fascism had created an entire industry-from crime. "Crime and cruelty by any kind of procèdes including passage through the arms, hanging, 1'intoxication by gas, death by starvation. .. The move has tobacco, torture of all kinds, men used as guinea pigs for medical experiments and other procèdes "It's the same thing for the regime of Mullah Turkish and Arab dictators. The question that arises is what was the responsibility of scientists, intellectuals, scholars, scientists face the danger of fascism? What is the role of the struggle of scientists, researchers, scientists now face the genocide of the Kurdish people? Can we be a symbol of people who do nothing else qu'exister on his native land or we want to produce chemical weapons issue to criminals for killing a defenceless people, or we take our places in the human struggle ? We believe that the path of thinking of our President of the Republic of Mahabad Ghazi Mohammed and diplomacy scientist Dr. A. Ghassemlou, are light sources for the future of Kurdistan, not to mention that Major General Molla Mustafa Barzani was the Minister of Defence and Chief of Staff of the Republic to defend our homeland. Respect to Dr. Abdoulrahman, Ghassemlou Academician, thought Universal Kurdish Politician scientific of the Kurdistan

Dr Ali KILIC, Paris 13 juillet 2012

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