Leyla Zana urges UN's Guterres in letter to back Kurdistan referendum
ERBIL, Kurdistan Region (Kurdistan24) - In a letter to the United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, Turkey's prominent Kurdish lawmaker Leyla Zana urged the UN to support Kurdistan Region people's right to self-determination ahead of the Monday referendum on secession from Iraq.
Pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) MP and Sakharov Laureate Zana who holds a legendary stature among the Kurds for her activism in Turkey also said the US, EU, and regional states must respect Kurdistan's expression of its demands through peaceful means.
Below is the full text of her letter to the UN chief:
"Mr. Secretary-General Guterres,
The Kurds, one of the few peoples the world has left without a status, have spent the past century facing massacres, Anfals, exiles, denial, and assimilationist policies.
Kurdistan was divided in contravention of realities of life and history, sacrificed for the interests of the regional states.
In the search for its rights; the Kurdish people, otherized as a target, had to deal with the cruel face of those states.
The Kurds have hosted diverse cultural, ethnic and religious groups and never persecuted them because of their language, ethnicity or belief. Despite all the injustices they have been through, they kept their patience and maturity intact.
The Kurds continue paying the heaviest price against the barbarism of ISIS [the Islamic State group] for the sake of their own survival but also humanity.
Today, the people of Southern Kurdistan are going to hold a referendum in pursuit of their legitimate rights.
The referendum is a democratic and peaceful means by which the people seek to determine how they wish to live.
This democratic demand should be regarded as a just and legitimate step that must be left only to the will and approval of the people of Kurdistan.
The countries with irreconcilable differences unite leaving aside their issues when it comes to the Kurds and their rights.
No honorable society and individual expects approval when they reject slavery. The demand for freedom of the people of Southern Kurdistan cannot be viewed as the usurpation of the rights of neighboring states and peoples, nor is it a national security threat to them.
Neighbors must exercise prudence, stay away from threatening rhetoric, use a responsible language, and respect the democratic resolve of the people of Kurdistan.
No one should expect from the Kurds to pay a price because they demand their most basic rights and liberties!
How much more can a people bombed with chemical weapons, systematically exposed to mass killings, exiled from its destroyed villages and cities, subjected to bans on language, culture, and identity, with thousands of Ezidi women recently kidnapped and sold in slave markets pay?
The international community should, instead of hindering, forcefully back the will of the people of Kurdistan to seek its legitimate demands democratically and peacefully.
Peoples have the right to self-determination. The people of Kurdistan are not exempt from this right.
The United Nations, the European Union, the members of the [anti-Islamic state] Coalition and regional countries must fulfill their responsibilities to people of Kurdistan among them primarily the Kurds. If not now, then when?
In this very 21st century as the Kurds say enough is enough, now is the right time to create a foundation for a new democratic framework which enshrines the rights and freedoms of the peoples in Kurdistan.
This referendum is a new hope. It is an act of defiance in the face of destruction, denialism, assimilation, alienation, and extortion of rights. An opportunity is dawning for the diverse peoples and particularly the women of Kurdistan who have resisted the tyranny of the rulers.
The Kurdish people have for a week now put its ballot box on the streets and cried out its demand for freedom to the world:
"Nothing is more precious than liberty."
Editing by Ava Homa