Call out for assistance for research on Kurds in the UK

Research on Kurds in the UK

Ms Shadi Hessami, a PhD student at SOAS, supervised by Professor Annabelle Sreberny, is looking for Kurdish research participants in London to interview for her research project on the socio-political and socio-cultural impacts of Kurdish media on Kurdish diaspora. .

Her interviews would be as informal as possible and all information would be used solely for the purpose of my research. All information would be kept entirely anonymous and strictly confidential.

We, KSSO support and promote research on, about or by Kurdish peoples and would really appreciate if you could participate in this important research or help to find some participants for the above mentioned research project.

If you have any queries about the research, please contact:

Shadi Hessami, PhD student, SOAS
Telephone: 07747 755 477
Email: shadihessami@yahoo.co.uk

Brief introduction of the research

Impact of Kurdish media on Kurd in the UK

The aim of research is to examine Kurdish media consumption among those Kurds whose countries of origin are Iran, Iraq, Turkey, and possibly Syria. This reseach studies the role and the possible impact of Kurdish media on Kurdish identity and the way it has been express among different generations of Kurds in London. It is a cross-examination of varities elements, the obvious one is that it considers Kurds from different countries, in which Kurds originally reside.

The method I have chosen, mainly is focus-group interviewing. That is here that I would like to ask you to help me to gather some Kurdish people to form a group(s) to have a maximum two-hour discussion.

Aiming at having 6 different groups for my research, I would be great if you could help me with ideally 2 separate groups, each with following characteristics:

Having ideally 6 to 10 individuals in each group (less than 6 is also fine)

Age group from 16 to 55

Preferably to have a mix of those from Iran, Iraq, Turkey, Syria

Preferably to have mix of women and men

Preferably one group with same age group and generation, and one group with mix of different generations

Ideally it would be mix of professionals and people from all walks of life

They all have to be able to communicate, i.e. all able to speak Kurdish or all able to speak English

I can’t emphasise enough that how much your help is appreciated, and how much this research rely on your contribution

Images of working lives: Experiences of Kurdish migrants in London

Photo Exhibition

Organized by Working Lives Research Institute, London Metropolitan University

Date: Friday 16th- 23rd July 2010 ( Exhibition opening reception 5pm on Friday 16th July 2010)

Venue: RenkArt Centre, 86 Stoke Newington High Street, Stoke Newington N16 7PA

Images of working lives is an exhibition held as part of an Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) funded research project conducted by Working Lives Research Institute, London Metropolitan University to highlight the working conditions of an ‘invisible’ community, Kurdish Diaspora, in London.

The study focused on minority ethnic workers who experienced difficulties at work and how they developed strategies to solve work related problems including racism, discrimination, bullying, exclusion and isolation. We chose three different minority ethnic communities- locally based ethnic groups, Kurds in Hackney, South Asian in Ealing and Black Caribbeans in Lambeth- in London to enable us to compare and contrast a whole range of different issues. We interviewed total of 185 workers – 100 individually and 88 in 16 focus groups and 64 interviews with ‘key respondents’ who were officials from trade unions, advice agencies and community groups.

Our research team will give brief information on our research findings on the working condition of the Kurdish workers and their strategies to solve work related problems and difficulties.

The exhibition illustrates different experiences of the Kurdish Diaspora in the context of ethnicity, identity, belonging, community and working lives. The audience is invited to take a closer look at the migrants’ life experiences reflected to the lens of photo journalist Jim Hodson, Ümit Avcu and Kurdish photographers’ group RenkArt including Döndü Demir, Erdogan Guccuk, Bektaþ Arif, Alper Taþçý as well as locally based Kurdish photographer Ümit Avcu.

Research team: Dr Jane Holgate (Principal investigator), Janroj Keles, Dr Leena Kumarappan and Professor Anna Pollert.

For further information please contact Dr Jane Holgate or Janroj Keles

j.holgate@londonmet.ac.uk or j.keles@londonmet.ac.uk

This research project is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council and is being undertakeby the Working Lives Research Institute, London Metropolitan University.
For further information about our research please visit our website
http://www.workinglives.org/research-themes/wlri-project-websites/$-emraw/emraw_home.cfm

Talk

Talk: Ms Milena Buyum, Campaigner on Turkey for Amnesty International and Mr Ali Has, Lawyer

Concert

Aygul Erce, singer-song writer

Film Screening

‘Taslanan Vicdanlar/Brutal Consciences’ by Cenk Örtülü & Zeynel Koç Turkish and Kurdish with English subtitles, Running time 50 minutes.

Date and time: 24 June 2010,@ 6:00

Venue: Khalili Lecture Theatre, School of Oriental and African Studies SOAS, Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square, London WC1H 0XG

Organised by Kurdish society at SOAS(KSSOAS), Kurdish Studies and Student Organisation (KSSO) and Britain Peace Council (MECLISA AŞITIYA BRITANYA’YE – BRITANYA BARIŞ MECLISI)

Seminar abstract and program

We are deeply concerned about the routine and systematic beating, ill-treatment and imprisonment of Kurdish children in Turkey. According to Amnesty International’s newly published report, “since 2006, thousands of children in Turkey, some as young as 12, have been prosecuted under anti-terrorism legislation solely for their alleged participation in demonstrations”.

Children aged 10-18 are being detained, interrogated and tried under the same conditions as adults. As a consequence, some are sentenced and jailed for 5  to 10  years under the anti-terror law. The children are accused of participating in street protests, doing the victory sign, shouting slogans, throwing stones at the Turkish police or singing Kurdish songs.

Children have been forced to make statements in adult courts without their lawyers or social workers present. They have been imprisoned in adult prisons and were deprived of their rights to education. Moreover children have been deported to other prisons far from their families so their families have difficulties regularly visiting them.

Reports about this mistreatment of children have caused an outcry amongst Kurdish communities and the international public. Families of the children, Kurdish and Turkish civil organisations, human rights organisations and intellectuals have called on the Turkish government to release children and abandon discriminatory laws against the Kurdish ethnic minority, especially towards Kurdish children. The human rights group Justice for Children Initiative has begun a campaign to force the Turkish government to find a solution for the imprisoned children before the Turkish parliament goes on summer holiday.

Turkey is a signatory to the Convention of the Rights of the Child and has a duty to protect the rights of all children. Article 2 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child bans discrimination against children. It states that “Within the jurisdictions and authorities bestowed upon them, Signatory States of this convention recognise and guarantee the rights defined in this Convention to all children without any discrimination based on the children’s, their parents’ or guardians’ race, colour, gender, language, political or otherwise opinions, national, ethnic or social background, property, disability, birthright or any other status.”

We have invited Ms Milena Buyum, campaigner on Turkey for Amnesty International to talk about Amnesty International research and report on imprisoned Kurdish children. Ms Fatma Unsal, of from ‘Justice for Children Initiative’ (ÇİAÇ) will talk about ‘Justice for Children Initiative’ newly announced campaign to force the Turkish government to stop these policies towards Kurdish children.

Aygul Erge, singer-song writer who has composed a song titled “Dayê Min Bifiltîne/ My mum rescue me” on imprisoned Kurdish children will sing before starting the seminar.

We will screen the film ‘Taslanan Vicdanlar/Brutal Consciences’ by Cenk Örtülü & Zeynel Koç (running time 50 minutes). The film focuses on imprisoned Kurdish children who are subjected to the Turkish state’s physical and psychological violence.

Further information on www.ksso.org.uk , mc@ksso.org.uk or www.barismeclisi.com • britainpeacecouncil@googlemail.com

On the 30th of May, 2010, Vera B. Saeedpour, a longtime friend to and scholar  on the Kurdish nation died at the age of 80. She spent many years of her life dedicated to highlighting and raising awareness of the plight of the Kurdish nation in the Middle East, as well as helping to preserve Kurdish culture through the establishment of a library and museum.

In 1981 the first Kurdish Program in the United States was established in New York City by Vera Beaudin Saeedpour, widow of Homayoun Saeedpour, a Kurd from Sanandaj in Iran, with the aim of informing Americans of the existence and plight of his people, the fourth largest ethnic group in the Middle East. Initially operating under the aegis of Cultural Survival Inc., the Program subsequently established the Kurdish Heritage Foundation of America solely to support the Kurdish Library and Museum.

Amanj S. Yarwaessi

Scholar and Archivist of the Kurdish Culture, Dies at 80

By DOUGLAS MARTIN Published: nytimes, June 7, 2010

Vera Beaudin was newly divorced and a recent arrival in Harlem when a
stranger knocked on her door one night carrying flowers and coffee cake. She
fell in love, married and learned about the plight of his oppressed people.

When he died five years later, Ms. Beaudin, who had taken her new husband’s
name, Saeedpour, responded by starting the first library and museum in the
United States dedicated to Kurds, an ancient, stateless people straddling
three nations in southwest Asia.

She did this in a Brooklyn brownstone where five or six cats and a dog or
two prowled and where people rented rooms on the upper floors. Soon,
scholars, journalists, government officials, homesick Kurds and the just
plain curious were beating a path to her door.

“I’m dealing with the whole world from this brownstone,” Ms. Saeedpour said
in an interview with The Associated Press in 1988. “I’m like an old lady
holding fast to a balloon that’s going up in the sky.”

Ms. Saeedpour (pronounced sah-EED-por) died at age 80 on May 30 in
Schenectady, N.Y., not far from the Victorian house she had recently moved
into in Fort Plain, N.Y. Her daughter, Rebecca Beaudin, said she had died of
a heart attack.

Ms. Saeedpour had planned to move her library and museum to her new home,
but now the fate of her collection – more than 2,000 texts in Kurdish and
other languages as well as artifacts, costumes, ancient maps and artworks -
is uncertain. So is the future of the two journals about Kurdish concerns
she started, edited and published.

When Ms. Saeedpour opened the library in 1986, The New York Times quoted a
Kurdish scholar at Columbia University about the event’s importance. He
asked to be identified by his pen name, Samande Siaband, because he feared
reprisals against his relatives in Iraq and Iran.

“It is extremely important to have a center of Kurdish research because our
people are politically fragmented and our culture is threatened with
extinction,” he said.

In 2003, Lokman I. Meho, a Kurdish scholar and an archivist now at the
American University in Beirut, told The Times, “People from all over the
world doing research on Kurds and Kurdistan get in touch with Vera.”

There are libraries and museums dedicated to Kurds in Britain, France and
Sweden, but Ms. Saeedpour’s is often called the only one in the United
States.

Kurds live mainly in Iran, Turkey and Iraq, where they were leading
opponents of the regime of Saddam Hussein and now control an autonomous
region.

“What’s a Kurd?” was Ms. Saeedpour’s first response when she learned her
husband-to-be was one, The Associated Press reported.

A little more than a decade later, she said. “I know the Kurds better than
any Westerner living.”

Vera Marion Fine was born on March 27, 1930, in Barre, Vt., where her father
made a living collecting and selling scrap rags and metal. At 17, she eloped
with Marcel Beaudin. They moved to Brooklyn, where he studied architecture
at Pratt Institute and she worked in a bakery and as an assistant to a
professor.

They had four sons, in addition to their daughter: Marc, Paul, Adam and Jeb.
All survive Ms. Saeedpour, as do two grandchildren.

When Ms. Saeedpour was about 40, she entered the University of Vermont,
where she graduated Phi Beta Kappa with a degree in sociology and stayed on
to earn a master’s in philosophy. When she and Mr. Beaudin were in the
process of divorcing, she left for New York to enroll in Teachers College,
where she earned a Ph.D. in 1976.

While at Columbia, her apartment in Harlem was robbed. She saw a man in the
window of a nearby building and shouted at him, asking if he had seen anyone
escaping down her fire escape. The man was Homayoun Saeedpour, then 26. He
would soon knock on her door, carrying gifts.

By 1981, Mr. Saeedpour had leukemia and needed a bone marrow transplant. Ms.
Saeedpour was able to get some of his family members out of Iran to donate
marrow, but a doctor, mistaking her husband for a Persian, would not perform
the procedure, according to several reports. He said he had a friend who was
held hostage in Iran. Mr. Saeedpour soon died.

Ms. Saeedpour had already learned much about Kurdish suffering from long
talks with her husband. These shared emotions became the foundation of their
relationship.

“We had nothing in common except a sadness, maybe,” she said in 1991. “Sort
of a mystical sadness.”

The year her husband died, she started what she called the Kurdish Program
with the help of anthropologists at Harvard. An inspiration was her
increasingly strong Jewish faith and comparisons she made between the
Kurdish experience and the Holocaust.

The library came in 1986; the museum opened in 1988, and began regular
exhibitions. Admission was free, but by appointment. In 1991, Ms. Saeedpour
began a foundation to help finance her efforts.

Last year, in an interview, Ms. Saeedpour more or less summed up her life.
She said, “Nothing that happens to normal people happens to me.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/08/nyregion/08saeedpour.html

You are kindly invited to attend the forthcoming Kurdish Studies seminar and book launch

The Passion and Death of Rahman the Kurd: Dreaming Kurdistan

Speaker: Carol Prunhuber, journalist and author of the book “The Passion and Death of Rahman the Kurd: Dreaming Kurdistan”

Date/time: 7th June 2010, 18:00

Venue: G2, School of Oriental and African  Studies(SOAS) Nearest tube station: Russell Square, Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square, LondonWC1H 0XG

Organised by Kurdish Society at SOAS (KSSOAS) and Kurdish Studies and Students Organisation (KSSO)

Seminar abstract

Ms Carol Prunhuber, a Venezuelan author and journalist explores the life of the legendary Kurdish leader, Dr Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou in her book titled “The Passion and Death of Rahman the Kurd: Dreaming Kurdistan”. Dr Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou “was a visionary and cultivated leader of the Iranian Kurdish revolutionary movement and a respected interlocutor for the West. He brought the concepts of democracy to his country.  Educated in Paris and Prague with a PhD in Economy, he spoke eight languages. Beloved by his people, Ghassemlou was ahead of his time, leading a movement to oppose the theocratic regime of the Ayatollah Khomeini for ten years.” (from The Passion and Death of Rahman the Kurd ). Dr Ghassemlou was assassinated by the agents of Islamic Republic of Iran on July 13th 1989 in Vienna, Austria where Dr Ghassemlou was holding secret talks on negotiating a supposed peaceful solution of the Iran’s Kurdish question with Iranian envoys sent by then Iranian president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.

The Assassins were not punished for their terrorist crime by “Austrian democratic law state”. “Soon after his untimely murder, responsibility was directed towards Iran; yet no one was ever tried or punished for the crime. To this day, many unanswered questions remain” (from The Passion and Death of Rahman the Kurd )

The author states that “It was in Paris, in 1983, that I first met Dr Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou. We were introduced at the Kurdish Institute, where I was attending an exhibition with the Kurdish filmmaker Yilmaz Guney and his wife, Fatos Guney

After our meeting in Paris, Ghassemlou invited me to come to Kurdistan. Two years later, I arrived there alongside the French Gamma TV crew to film the Kurdish conflict in Iran. The seed for this book was planted at that time.”

Please join KSSO in this important seminar to hear the words of a journalist who actually witnessed the struggles of Kurds in the mountains of Kurdistan. Ms Carol Prunhuber has kindly accepted our invitation to come and talk about her journey to Kurdistan and her friendship with Dr Ghassemlou.

The book will be available on sale at the venue in English and Kurdish Sorani.

For further information click on www.ksso.org.uk or mc@ksso.org.uk

Speaker: Recep Marasli, the author of the book „ Armenian National Democratic Movement and The 1915 Genocide“

@Kurdish Advice Centre

24th April 2010, @ 5:00pm at Kurdish Advice Centre, 2 Birkbeck Road ondon N8 7PF   020 8347 9657

@Cafe Mostra

25th April 2010, @5:00pm at  Cafe Mostra, 86 Stoke Newington High Street, Stoke Newington London N16 7PA

@ SOAS

Speakers: Recep Marasli and Dr. Choman Hardi

Unfortunately, due to his busy schedule, Dr Surhan Cam of  Cardiff  University is not going to come to London to  chair the seminar

Date and Time: 22nd April 2010, @ 7:00pm

Venue: KLT, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London

Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square, London WC1H 0XG

Organised by Kurdish Studies and Students Organisation (KSSO) and Kurdish Society at SOAS (KSSOAS)

Dr. Choman Hardi will open the seminar with a brief talk on Nationalism and Genocide. Then Mr. Recep Marasli will talk about Turkish nationalism and the Armenian genocide.

Genocide and Facing Historical Facts

Most of our planet is inhabited by multi-ethnic, multi-national and multi-cultural groups of people. However the nationalist doctrines and ethnic chauvinism combined with a policy of homogenization that pushes all other ethnic entities to a secondary and dependent position, are key forces that contribute to policies of genocide. For example until the 20^th century, the Ottoman Empire was significantly preserving its multinational, multiethnic, multicultural nature. However the conversion of this multi-national, multi-ethnic, multi-cultural entity to the Turkish ethnic supremacy in the form of “nation state” was only possible through systematic destruction and extermination policies. The lives of some ethnic groups (Armenians, Assyrians-Syrians and the Pontic Greeks) have been destroyed through genocide, massacres, direct/ indirect dispossession, and deportation in order to construct a Turkish nation and facilitate the Turkisation of Anatolia. The genocide of 1915 was the apex of this political process when the Turkish nationalists annihilated the oldest inhabitants of Mesopotamia and the ancient Near Eastern region. According to different sources, one and a half million Armenians have been killed (see Marashlian 1991, Noël 1994, Gaunt 2006, Henham and Behrens 2007,Schaefer 2008, Schaller and Zimmerer 2008) during systematic destruction and extermination policies of Turkish nationalists. It is also the result of such a political reality that the Kurdish nation today suffers from ethnic discrimination, displacement, assimilation and genocide (Fernandes 2007) and linguicide (Hassanpour 1992). Despite an extremely long-running political struggle and conflict it continues to remain an internationally unrecognised and oppressed nation whose rights are constantly denied. In this atmosphere of political confrontation it is important for people to understand history of systematic destruction and extermination policies of Turkish nationalist and their nation building process.

Mr. Marasli states that he has started his research in prison “with my desire to learn what actually happened. But during the research I came to the conclusion that the fates of Armenian, Greek, the Assyrian/Chaldean/Syriac people, Kurds and Arabs in this region are interwoven and their history needs to be studied in relation to each other. I attempted to analyse the shift from a multi-cultural region to a single national, mono-cultural wasteland

How have these societies encountered a future, after experiencing such a large scale of historical and social destruction? What kind of problems has this destruction caused for different ethnic groups and for the restructuring of the Turkish Republic? What role does this historical tragedy play in the ethno-national conflicts and problems experienced today?

The lack of analysis and condemnation of these tragic events plays an important role in the repetition of the ethnic and national discrimination, oppression and annihilation policies in the 21^th century.

How can ethnic cleansing, forced displacement, assimilation and intersectional national discrimination policies are prevented? How can we change the mental structures implicated in these large scale crimes against humanity? What are the obstacles and opportunities to challenge the mental structure of nationalism?”

Mr. Marasli states that “when discussing historical events, of course, what we really want to find out is how we can establish fair, equal and peaceful societies. I believe that facing the facts of our own history bravely and condemning genocide in everyday life including in political, social, cultural practices and developing international intervention policies against possible genocide can only help us to create a more secure and peaceful world”

Newroza we  pîroz be!

Cejna Newroz pîroz bet

Newroz pîroz wo!

Seminar Abstract

The recent resistance against the Islamic regime and cry for freedom in Iran, labelled as ‘the Green Movement’, has taken the focus of attentions.  It all started when the re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in June 2009, was disputed by the two defeated candidates, Mir Hussein Mousavi and the former speaker of parliament and senior cleric, Mehdi Karroubi. In the past seven months despite increased security, official warnings and often brutal crackdowns on opposition figures, journalists and ordinary demonstrators, mass protests have increasingly taken place.  In fact, the continued mass protests across the country, despite harsh security measures, turned the Green Movement into a nationwide uprising against the regime.

In this speech, Said examines the weight of the national minority communities in the politics of the Green Movement. He argues that the right national minorities in Iran has received little attention in the recent oppositional movement. This speech enlarges upon this topic using political perspective and conceptual framework characteristic of the recent Iranian movement aiming at the human rights and democracy. The emergence of intellectual debates on reformism, establishment of the law-state, the reaffirmation of Persian nationalism as hegemonic and liberating discourse, are shared characteristics which shed lights on democratic developments that is currently occurring in Iran. The speech suggests that by a continued silence about the multi-national fabric of Iranian society and by reluctance over multi-ethnic definitions of the conditions of citizenship, the leaders of the Green Movement are increasingly turn away from liberal and democratic rhetoric towards the less privileged nationalities of Iran. It is argued that a democratic movement must have a democratic agenda. In Iranian’s context, it must not only aim for the human rights values but must also incorporate national rights and justices for peoples of Iran.

Biography

Said Shams was born and educated in Iran. From the early 1970s, he was an active revolutionary. After the revolution of 1979, he continued his political activities, subsequently he lost his job as teacher and suffered persecution and then repeated threats before he was able to immigrate to the UK in 1990 where he continued his studies: B.A. (University of East London, and PhD (Royal Holloway). He managed a range of projects and conducted researches and surveys from 1996 to 2008 while working for the voluntary sector in London. He is presently an independent researcher.

University of Westminster SU, Kurdsih Society at Westminster University are holding a Newroz party in  coorperation with KSSO.

Pre-registration is required! Deadline for registration:  26^th Mach 2001 at 11:00 am Email us at kurdish.society@su.westminster.ac.uk

The well known Kurdish stand up comedian Murat Batgi will perform in Lodnon on June 4th and 5th  at the ART ZONE.

KSSO   promotes and strongly recommends  you   this unmissssable stand-up comedy.

Venue: THE ART ZONE

54-56 The Market Square, Edmonton Green  London N9 0TZ

Date and time: 4th and 5th June 2010 @ 19:30