Never forget Halabja. I read this sentence countless times every mid-march. Halabja was part of al-Anfal, an eight-stage program designed to forever eradicate the Kurdish identity, engineered by an ethnocentric regime whit one single goal. It was not to kill all of us, because genocide is never about literally killing an entire people. It’s designed to shock, damage and crush [...]
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Memorial service at the UN headquarters to honor victims of Halabja
On Monday 11th of March a memorial service was held at the United Nations headquarters to honor the victims of the chemical bombardment of the Kurdish town Halabja (Mars) that occurred 16th March 1988. The memorial service was organized by the Iraqi Ministry of Foreign Affairs through the “Mission of Iraq to the UN”. Speeches were held, slide shows were [...]
Stockholm Kurdish Film Festival
Between February 21st – 24th the first Kurdish film festival in Sweden was arranged at Bio Rio (editorial remark: translated to Cinema Rio) Hornstull, Stockholm. Stockholm’s Kurdish Film Festival (SKFF) was established in January 2012. The primary goal is to promote Kurdish movie culture. Yasemin Yekta Salik is one of the arrangers behind the festival. To her the festival is [...]
Western Kurdistan – an assessment
As the fighting continues and indeed intensifies it becomes more evident by the day that the turmoil in Syria has no easing in sight. This has to do with several reasons. Firstly, as the conflict wears on, the opposition that was organized by the country’s majority Sunni population looks more and more fragmented and radicalized which has prompted the peoples [...]
A visit to Stockholm Kurdish Film Festival (SKFF)
For those of you who are worried and for those of you who are wondering how Kurdish film is doing and what shape it is in, do not worry, Kurdish film is doing wonderfully. For four days Kurdish movies were played at the first Kurdish film festival in Sweden. The contributions which were movies produced both in Kurdistan and the [...]
Interview: The Voyage by Rojda Sekersöz
- If i happen to only reproduce what has already been done within the Swedish movie industry, I hope someone has a serious talk with me and tells me to stop playing around with tax money, says the movie director Rojda Sekersöz who at this moment is currently producing the short film Maiden Voyage (original title Jungfrufärd). Rojda Sekersöz grew [...]
On the future of Syria
The most enthusiastic observers of the Arab Spring thought in March of 2011 that Syria was just going to be another stop on the path of full democratization of the Middle East, drawing comparisons to wave of democratization that had swept over most of Latin America during the 1970’s and across Eastern Europe after the fall of the Berlin Wall [...]
A Kurdish Lullaby
This year the Kurdish Youth Festival was three (almost four) days between Januaru 4-7th and took place in San Diego, California at the beautiful Hilton La Jolla Torrey Pines. The organizer hosted hundreds of people with different profession, different interest, and different talents from different parts of the world. When Soraya told the audience the purpose of the play they all agreed on [...]
A city called Erbil
The ground beneath my feet has hardened. It is difficult to take root and I quickly realize that I probably have been a romantic. There is a bubble here that I don’t want to end up in. A beautiful facade and everybody is wandering around there, deep inside the bubble. I’ve been here many times in my life, in Kurdistan [...]
Interview With Two of the Committee Members Behind the Kurdish Youth Festival
During January a group of Kurdish Youth located in the United States of America came together and organized a festival – the Fourth annual Kurdish Youth Festival in San Diego, sunny California. Beyan.net managed to get ahold of two of the arrangers, Nuha Serrac and Akhink Omer. Nuha Serrac is a Kurdish-American who has recently returned to Kurdistan from Phoenix, [...]
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