Iranian Kurdistan: Workers Solidarity against Repression
The communities of Southern and Eastern Kurdistan have found in the general strike a more than relevant tool to fight against the policies of the Iranian government aiming to asphyxiate the Kurdish people living within their borders. Police and military repression have not been able to avoid the spread of worker’s action opposing the will of Teheran to use unemployment and poverty in Eastern Kurdistan as a method to submit its people. This implementation of this strategy to defend the rights of the Kurdish people across borders adds to the resource to non-violent civil resistance use in the recent past by this community, opening the door to new possibilities in their struggle for political emancipation.
The article below were published by pdki.org
For the past three weeks, the cities in eastern (Iranian) Kurdistan bordering southern (Iraqi) Kurdistan have witnessed strikes in response to the Iranian regime’s closure of the border crossings. In a statement issued today, PDKI is calling on the people of eastern Kurdistan to stage a general strike in solidarity with cities bordering southern Kurdistan, but also to condemn the Iranian Islamist regime’s policy of economic strangulation of Kurdistan.
The strikes began in the city of Bane and later spread to Jwanrow, Mariwan, Piranshar, Saghez, and Urmia. In spite of increased militarization and intimidation by the Iranian regime, including numerous arrests, the civilian population in the cities bordering southern Kurdistan continued to strike.
The closure of the border crossings between the two different parts of Kurdistan has resulted in rising unemployment and a worsening of the economic difficulties and poverty in eastern Kurdistan.
PDKI is calling on the people all over Kurdistan to join the strikes.
Lately, novel methods of civil resistance against the Iranian regime have been invented in Kurdistan. For example, Kurdish civilians have spread several hundred-meter-long tablecloths on the ground in several cities to symbolically warn about the lack of food and widespread poverty that will follow if the border crossings remain closed.
In addition to the plundering of the natural resources of Kurdistan by the Islamist regime, it has been a longstanding and consistent government policy in Iran to keep Kurdistan in a state of economic deprivation.
Trade with southern Kurdistan is therefore the only means for tens of thousands of Kurds to find employment and an income in order to survive.
Photo courtesy of WikimediaCommons
