The Speech of Mrs. Lucina Kathmann, 

Deputy Secretary of the PEN International

Hello!

I am back with my friends the writers of Kurdish PEN again. When Zaradachet wrote to me about this meeting, I thought: The Kurdish writers now count on me. I don't speak their language, I don't even speak their second and third language, and still somehow we reach across the gap from Mexico to Kurdistan. For me, this is what International PEN is about.

It is especially wonderful to be with you here on International Women's Day. Last September, at the International PEN Congress in Macedonia, Zaradachet 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 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.

What of conditions for Kurdish writers? Do Kurdish writers have freedom of _expression? Before I came here 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 this 5 page list. (UNFURL DOCUMENT) That fact speaks for itself. Beside threats to individual writers, there are restrictions on the use of the Kurdish language. Even elsewhere: Syrian Kurdish playwright Marwan Osman, a member of your 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.

This means to me that the work of Kurdish PEN is extremely important. Your work is not only important to Kurdish culture, it is very important to International PEN as well. I think the International Secretary's presence here today makes that clear. Kurdish writers have problems with every human right that International PEN fights for, from the perspective of every one of International PEN's standing committees. Kurdish language, Kurdish literature, Kurdish writers and everything Kurdish are under constant threat. International PEN is happy to help fight the threats with you, but it is your special job as Kurdish writers to make the Kurdish language and culture grow and flourish, to give it the inspiration to survive.

Thank you for inviting me, I know I am going to have a wonderful time with you today.