Kurdistance: No Good News · Global Voices
Deborah Ann Dilley

The overwhelming themes of the Kurdish blogs this week has been a sense of outrage and despair over the never-changing events in the lives of the Kurdish peoples.
Let's begin with Kurdish Aspect this week and his posting of a punishment given to a small child in Eastern Kurdistan (Western Iran) who was caught stealing a loaf of bread.  The pictures are incrediably saddening as you are given a blow by blow pictorial account of a small child being forced to have his arm crushed by a truck as his penalty.  His posting also alludes to the current situation of a Kurdish woman, Malak Ghorbany, who has been sentenced to death by stoning.  Hiwa from Hiwa Hopes gives a link to an online petition to save her.  Reactions to the case of Malak, and the fate of Iranian Kurds in general, have been fervent…no more so that Mizgin from Rasti:
Another item that has been gaining some steam is the sentencing of a Kurdish woman, Malak Ghorbany, to death by stoning, news that first appeared on ADNKI. You know, what really gets me is how every Persian on the planet loves to boast about how freakin’ civilized they are. They'll even put down the Turks for their barbaric, Kemalist ways, which is hilarious given that Persians do exactly the same things. . . especially with regard to Kurds.
So here we have the great and civilized Persian nation engaging in a little stone-aged style execution, something for which the great and civilized Persian nation has a definite enthusiasm. According to Amnesty International, Iran allegedly put a moratorium on death by stoning at the end of 2002. But this little bit of celibacy proved too much for the bloodthirsty nation, and by September of 2003, they were back at it.
Rasti also gives us the segway for our next topic of discussion in the Kurdish blogs this week, that of Northern Kurdistan (Southeast Turkey).  Commenting in her post “View from a Glass House” Mizgin slams the Turkish government for its repression tactics against the Kurds in its Southeast region, stating that the more the government pushes the more reaction from the people will be felt.  In response to the indictments held against 56 mayors in the Kurdish regions for signing a petition to Save RojTV, Mizgin had the follow to say:
The article continues to give a breakdown of how many charges were in different court jurisdictions, how many were acquitted, how many are still ongoing, etc., and it finishes with some of the more recent charges against Osman. Some of those are still ongoing, such as the charge against him and 55 other DTP mayors for sending a letter of support for Roj TV to Danish PM Rasmussen and for sending an Amed municipality ambulance to carry a gerîla's body to his family.
Perhaps one of the most ridiculous charges is the one in which Osman is accused of “demeaning the people publicly by paying respect to differences of race and region,” a charge stemming from a magazine interview. Where else in the world is someone charged with being a terrorist for making statements respecting differences in race or region? Or can anyone imagine someone in the US being charged as a terrorist for saying “Mr. Abdullah Ocalan?”
Only in Turkey and nowhere else.
Osman isn't the only DTP mayor or politician being harassed by ridiculous charges either, but he is the target of the greatest number of charges. This is directly proportional to his popularity, a popularity which is seen as a very dangerous thing by the state.
According to an article written by Vladimir on From Holland to Kurdistan, the Republic of Turkey spends more money from the national budget in the Kurdish regions in the Southeast, however as Vladimir points out:
If the Turkish state is really investing so much into the Kurdish regions, then they are really doing something wrong. The recent rise of suicides among Kurdish girls and the lack of Kurdish girls going to schools is an indicator that there is a need of a radical change in the policies of the Turkish state.
Now making a turn southwards to Southern Kurdistan (Northern Iraq) Hiwa from Hiwa Hopes deliberates whether or not Barzani was right in saying that the Kurds have been used as pawns for years….the answer…a resounding yes!  And Views from an American Kurd reports his frustration at finding out that a wayward brother has returned to Iraq against his own better judgement.