Addressing the UN and the Kurdish Writers on the Eve of War

Lucina Kathmann

This past two weeks have been very busy and jet-lagged for me. I went to New York City to the United Nations for meetings of the Commission on the Status of Women the two weeks from March 3 to March 14. In the intervening weekend I flew to Berlin for a meeting of Kurdish writers on Saturday March 8, returning to the UN in New York for the second week's meetings before returning to San Miguel.

I attended both these events in representation of International PEN, the largest worldwide organization of writers, of which I was recently elected an International Vice President, one of now five women in a stellar group of 20 which includes Arthur Miller, Mario Vargas Llosa and Nadine Gordimer. I am hoping my new power as Vice President can be a tool to help avert war and push for better priorities.


Weekend with the Kurdish People

On March 7th, I flew to Berlin for the Congress of the Kurdish PEN Center, which was held on March 8th, International Women's Day. The Kurdish PEN Center's writers are mostly in exile in several countries in Europe, though there are also members still in Kurdistan - a region which covers parts of Turkey, Syria, Iran and Iraq. Three of these four governments restrict the use of the Kurdish language and suppress Kurdish culture and in Iraq, the fourth nation, yet another war was about to break out. None of the four governments will allow the Kurdish writers to travel freely to a writers meeting. There were unhappy messages from several writers in Kurdistan who tried to come.

The exiled writers in Europe live so dispersed that it is very difficult for the Kurdish writers to meet. However, a good number arrived in Berlin from Belgium, Sweden, France, many parts of Germany...all over the place. When I got to the Literaturhaus in Berlin where the meeting was held, I recognized groups of Kurdish writers sleeping in their cars on the streets.

The Kurds, who number about 40 million, are among the most suppressed cultural groups in the world. They can represent every issue of freedom of expression without half trying. They are also the first victims of many wars, including the present one. At the moment of this meeting, the Turkish army, archenemies of the Kurds, had just marched into the Kurdish region of Iraq the day before, apparently the result of some arrangement with the United States. Some of the writers were refugees from Saddam Hussein's gas attacks on their villages in the late 80s and others were refugees from the Turkish army's attacks on other villages during the 90s. They knew very well how war would affect the Kurdish people, imminently, perhaps within hours.

I was one of two international guests of the Kurdish PEN. The other was PEN's International Secretary, Terry Carlbom. The Kurdish PEN needs us, it needs all the international support it can get. We often have to make their points for the Kurds in the international arena, since at the slightest provocation, they are accused of being PKK, the Kurdish armed guerrillas. Since I remember well the period in Mexico in which to say anything on behalf of the problems of the indigenous people got you labeled a "zapatista," I feel a great solidarity. There may be a wing of armed Kurds, but far the most important fact is that the Kurds are always getting betrayed, suppressed and creamed by everybody in the area. Anyone who glides over this fact very easily, including the U.S. government, can be suspected of self-serving shenanigans.


The War, Kurdish History and Kurdish Writers in Prison

In my opening remarks, I told the Kurdish writers about how last September, at the International PEN Congress in Macedonia, Kurdish PEN President Zaradachet Hajo introduced me to a Kurdish woman poet, Ms. Hevi Berwari. She came to the meeting of the Women Writers Committee at that Congress and spoke to us about the Kurdish situation. She told us the history of Kurdistan, which is now divided into four modern states, the majority of the Kurdish people - 20 millions - in what is now Turkey. She told us of the repression of Kurdish people by the Turkish government, particularly the case of former representative to Turkish Parliament Layla Zana, who still languishes in prison outside Ankara for the alleged crime of saying she is a Kurd. Hevi also told us about Iraq, her own part of Kurdistan. She told us of gas attacks on Kurdish villages in the 80s which have left a horrible situation, particularly for the women, who are in many cases the only people left in the villages.

I said, "I don't know if warfare was ever a noble and inspiring activity, but modern military violence certainly is not. It has become just a brutal way to tyrannize a civilian population. That is what it was in Latin America in the 70s and 80s, that is what it has been in Kurdistan for the last 15 or 20 years, that is what it is in the Middle East today. The US is presently contemplating new and terrible military violence, action that would certainly kill many Kurds and other innocent Iraqis. This way of doing things has to stop. It has to stop in Kurdistan and it has to stop everywhere."

I also spoke about freedom of expression issues: What of conditions for Kurdish writers? Do Kurdish writers have freedom of expression? Before I went to Berlin I asked the London office of the International PEN Writers in Prison Committee for an update on the cases of Kurdish writers under threat or jailed in Turkey, and I received a five page list, which I unfurled as I spoke. Beside threats to individual writers, I mentioned restrictions on the use of the Kurdish language. Outisde of Turkey, I mentioned the case of Syrian Kurdish playwright Marwan Osman, a member of the Kurdish PEN Center, was arrested January 15 for his participation in a completely non-violent event, and we still don't even know where he is being held.


Wrapping it up

After the daylong meeting, we went to the Kurdish Institute in Berlin for a poetry reading, where my Kurdish colleagues gave me several books and an excellent map of Kurdistan. Then, though we were sorry to leave each other, we really had to go, since many of the Kurdish writers were going to drive several hundred kilometers through the night. It made me sad to think of the tremendous sacrifices they have to make for a day with their colleagues, a day in their mother tongue, a day with their culture as intact as it gets, far away in exile, their friends and relatives under threat of war, scared as always.

I probably looked a bit strange Saturday night a week later as I traveled home to San Miguel with my rolled and wrapped up map of Kurdistan sticking up out of my backpack. A flight attendant called this long roll my "posters." I didn't quibble. Even those who want to invade it usually don't care what or where Kurdistan is.