Artillery barrage sets at least 40 families to flight

The Iranian army has made continual attacks, reports the Kurdistan/Iraq section of the Society for Threatened Peoples (GfbV), on villages in neighbouring Iraqi Kurdistan. The six little hamlets of Shnava, Mard, Sorkola, Bastian, Yaresh and Virzka were bombarded last Monday by heavy artillery. The inhabitants had to leave their houses instantly and flee to the nearby town of Qala Dizah, 160 km north of the town of Suleimania. At least 40 of the refugee families now have to live in tents which have been set up by the refugee agency of the United Nations, UNHCR.

The attacks were explained with the pretext that fighters of the Kurdish PJAK Party were hiding on Iraqi territory in the barely accessible region bordering on Iranin the province of Suleimaniya in the federal state of Kurdistan.Those mostly affected were Kurdish cattle-breeders who go with their herds into the mountains, where water is plentiful. In Iraqi Kurdistan as in other countries of the Near East there is a severe drought.

The GfbV warns that the continuation of shelling by the Iranian army could injure many innocent civilians. Iraqi Kurdistan is at the present time the only place within Iraq in which Christian Assyro-Chaldaean and Armenian, Yezidi, Mandaic, Turkmen and other refugees from south and central Iraq can find refuge.

Background information:

The PJAK, the Party of Free Life of Kurdistan (in Kurdish: Parti Jazani Azadi Kurdistan), is an armed group closely allied to the Kurdish PKK in Turkey. It has been engaged since 2004 in heavy fighting with Iranian forces.Iran is made up of many nations: besides the Persians there are Aseri, Kurds, Arabs, Baloch, Murkmens, Assyrians and other smaller ethnic and religious minorities. The non-Persian nationalities make up much more than half of the total population. They are not recognized as independent peoples with their own languages, cultures and history, but are deliberately termed as „ethnic groups”. They all suffer under suppression and discrimination.

The area populated by the Kurds in Iran covers the four provinces of Kermanshah, Ilam, West Aserbaidjan and Kurdistan in the west of the country and has with its ten million inhabitants a total area of about 125,000 sq. km. Almost 98% of the Kurds in Iran call themselves Moslems. 75% of them are Sunnis, 25% Shiites. The most imporant Iranian Kurdish movement is the Democratic Party of Kurdistan-Iran (PDKI). It declared aim, which is also pursued by many smaller Kurdish associations, is the achieving of human rights, democracy and regional self-government for Kurds in a democratic federal Iran.