close button
Switch to Iranwire Light?
It looks like you’re having trouble loading the content on this page. Switch to Iranwire Light instead.
Society & Culture

Podcast: Death in Kurdistan

May 8, 2015
IranWire
8 min read
Podcast: Death in Kurdistan
Podcast: Death in Kurdistan

You’re listening to Iran’s Weekly Wire; I’m Roland Elliott Brown.

*

A young woman falls from a hotel balcony. People find her body on the street below. Back upstairs, police arrest man and take him away. People whisper that he’s a government official. But everyone who actually knows what happened seems desperate to keep a lid on the facts. It all sounds as shady as hell. It reeks of foul play and corruption. To Western ears, it sounds like the makings of a lurid film noir script. But in that’s not how it is in western Iran. There, it reads more like the basis for a regional security crisis.

*

The first thing you need to know about this case is, it happened in Kurdistan. Iran has suppressed its Kurdish population for decades, and relations between Kurds and the government are tense.

The city of Mahabad, where this happened, is a historic center of resistance to governments in Tehran.

And the victim, Farinaz Khosravani, was a Kurd. She was a 26 year-old computer science graduate. She died on May 4th, when she fell from the fourth floor balcony of the Hotel Tara, where she worked. Her smiling picture is all over Kurdish media, and also on IranWire.

The reason this case is explosive is that the man who was in her room when she fell appears to have been part of Iran’s security establishment. That’s the same security establishment that suppresses Kurdish identity. The same security establishment that detains hangs suspected Kurdish insurgents without a proper trial.

To get some insight about Iranian Kurdistan, I spoke to Tara Fatehi. She’s a Kurd too. Her family left  Kurdistan for Australia as refugees in 1992. Now she’s spokesperson for the Kurdistan Human Rights Network. I asked her how Iran relates to its Kurdish population.

[Tara Fatehi] The Iranian regime has cracked down on the Kurds ever since the 80s, after the revolution, and has really both ethnically and religiously and culturally repressed and oppressed the Kurds to the point where they haven't been able to have schools in their language, any Kurdish activists who have spoken out for Kurdish rights have ended up imprisoned, persecuted and even executed. We've seen, over the years, crackdowns on Kurdish clothing, attempts by the government to demonize the Kurdish culture, and push Iranian citizens away from practicing their cultural diversity.

Iran’s Kurdish population reacts to the this situation in different ways. There is an armed separatist movement called PJAK that fights the government. But for most Kurds, the struggle is more about civil rights.

[Tara Fatehi] Generally Kurdish political parties in Iran have always asked for democracy for Iran and federalism for Kurdistan. They have always tried to work within the framework of Iran. However, unfortunately, they have been able to make absolutely no political gains within the Iranian regime, and the Kurds have no representation in the government, even on the local level, so it's been very difficult to have a voice for the Kurdish minority, or any minority for that matter, within the current framework of the Iranian government. For a long time, the right to self-determination has always been a big push, again within the framework of Iran. on a local and smaller level, the right to education in their mother tongue, the right to express their views, their culture, their traditions, openly practice their religion, so it's about being able to practice life as a Kurd.

So Kurds aren’t necessarily enemies of the Iranian government.

In 2013, when Hassan Rouhani ran for president, he promised to confront discrimination against Iran’s minorities, and the majority of Kurds voted for him. But so far, their situation hasn’t improved much.

Hardliners in Iran still see the Kurds as a security threat. Since Rouhani became president, they have shown Rouhani their power by executing large numbers of captured Kurdish insurgents and political prisoners. Their heavy handed approach has its roots in the Iranian Revolution of 1979.

[Tara Fatehi] After the so-called revolution in Iran, when the Islamic Republic came into power in the late 70s, early 80s, there was a huge Kurdish uprising, and there is a history of Kurdish strength and power in the Kurdish regions of Iran, so that scares the government [...] Kurdish nationalism is on the rise, and the Iranian government is very worried about a return of a very big Kurdish uprising in the Kurdish regions in Iran.

So after Farinaz Khosravani died, Kurdish social media lit up with accusations that an Iranian security official or an intelligence ministry employee—that is, probably one of those same hardliners—had tried to rape her.

The story went that she had either died trying to escape, or had jumped to save what people called her “honor.” Whatever happened her death made Kurds see red.

[Tara Fatehi] Khosravani’s death symbolizes the everyday oppression and abuse Kurds face by the Iranian regime, and by security officials in the country. It was a boiling point and people really hit the roof and just are trying to voice the years of oppression and abuse they face on a daily basis, and Farinaz became a symbol of that for them.

I asked Tara Fatehi what her organization had found out about the case.

[Tara Fatehi] We have been constantly in touch with local sources in Mahabad, and also Farinaz Khosravani’s family about the situation, and unfortunately it is still very unclear exactly what circumstances have led to her death. Officials are still saying that the investigations are ongoing.

That wasn’t good enough for everyone in Mahabad. On May 7, three days after Farinaz’s death, hundreds of protesters marched on the hotel where she died. IranWire’s Shima Shahrabi spoke to some of the protesters.

One of them implied that the hotel manager, Nader Molavi, had accepted sexual impropriety from a government official so his hotel would get a five star rating.

Another referred to an infamous series of crimes against women in central Iran when he said,  “We’re Kurds and this is Mahabad. This isn’t Isfahan where they can throw acid on our women’s faces and we stay silent.”

People joined the protests from neighbouring Kurdish cities, and soon they were clashing with local officials.

[Tara Fatehi] From what we understand from our local sources on the ground who were there during the protests, it is believed that riot police were brought out as soon as a call out was out on social media to gather in front of the hotel and demand justice. When protesters started gathering, the riot police were already there, and the security guards and intelligence services were there before protestors. When protesters started chanting and the crowd grew larger, local sources report they were attacked by gas to try and disperse the crowd, and when they saw that the crowd stayed on the street, they were attacked by shotguns and batons.

One of the protesters, a 26 year old man, was paralyzed by gunfire. Some people in the crowd broke into the hotel and hurled furniture from the balconies. Then they set the hotel on fire. You can see videos online of people filming it with their phones as black smoke pours out.

The government has launched a region-wide crackdown, raiding homes and arresting more than 100 people. They filled Mahabad with military vehicles. They also deployed forces throughout neighbouring Kurdish cities.

Kurds have protested over Khosravani’s death as far away as Berlin.

Officials in Mahabad have understandably condemned the burning of the hotel. But they obviously have no idea how to quell popular suspicions.

The hotel’s manager is talking nonsense. He says Khosravani “Wanted to get from the fourth-floor balcony to the third floor but she didn’t succeed and fell.”

He claims he has CCTV footage of Farinaz’s death, but he’s cagey about the details. He told IranWire’s correspondent, “I want to give you journalists some brotherly advice. The Khosravani family is grieving. Don’t add salt to their injuries or play around with the reputation of their daughter.”

Ali Radfar, a local security official says the man in the room had recently lost his wife, and merely intended to woo Farinaz. As if that explains anything. He agrees that she just fell out of the window when she tried to leave the room.

But Radfar is more concerned that the youth of the city has been, as he puts it, “emotionally provoked.” He warned parents of the protesters to keep their children off what he called “the path of the enemies of the regime.”

He also appealed to economic sensibilities, warning that Mahabad’s prospects as a tourist destination would be damaged.

That will hardly convince anyone security officials weren’t in bed with the hotel manager.

Nobody knows what really happened to Farinaz Khosravani.

And nobody knows what the future holds for Kurdish aspirations in Iran.

But in a sense the two questions are related:

[Tara Fatehi] This isn’t something new. We’ve seen this occur on larger scales across the country before, and we’ve seen them ultimately crushed by the regime, with absolutely no change to the situation of those protesting. We’ve seen no justice come for those who lose their lives, and in this case for Farinaz herself.

Farinaz was the victim in a desperately sad mystery. And she stands in for the tragedy of millions Kurds in Iran. No one has a good answer – not the shady hotel manager, or the Islamic Republic itself. But her death says everything about what Kurds face in Iran today.

*

That’s all from Iran’s Weekly Wire. If you want to find out more about this story, join us on Twitter or Facebook, or visit IranWire.com. You can also visit the Kurdistan Human Rights Network at kurdistanhumanrights.org.

comments