ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Mohammed Nourizad, a well-known activist, filmmaker and former journalist who has gone from supporting Iran’s clerical regime to turning into one of its fiercest critics, has visited the Kurdish areas of Iran with a white flag by way of apologizing for his earlier judgment of the country’s Kurds.
“My view of the Kurdish areas was strictly journalistic,” Nourizad told Rudaw in an interview. “My reading was based on government statements of words of people who had visited the Kurdish areas.”
Nourizad, 60, was once a fervent supporter of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. He said his opinion has completely changed since he started his visit to the Kurdish areas of western Iran, including the city of Sardasht.
The filmmaker said that the Iranian government has too often blamed Kurdish armed groups and their political demands for the impoverishment of the region, but that it was only an excuse for the regime to pursue its own goals.
“Everything they say is a myth, and it is to continue their security plans,” Nourizad said. “What the state shows on TV or radio (about Iran’s Kurdish regions) is in complete conflict with the reality. Anyone who has a negative notion of Kurdistan is because they haven’t seen Kurdistan,” he added.
Nourizad said that for some years he used to attack Iran’s reformists and political opposition in the country’s famous Kayhan newspaper, but that after the 2009 elections in which the police attacked demonstrators he changed his mind and switched sides.
“Before coming to Kurdistan I didn’t know that the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran or the Komala have denounced armed struggle and are in fact pursuing a political and cultural approach,” he said.
He believes that the Iranian government should seriously consider giving some concessions to these Kurdish groups for putting down their guns and seeking dialogue.
Iran is home to nearly eight million Kurds, who include Sunnis, Kakeis and Yarsans. Their struggle for decades has been more for their ethnic, cultural and political rights than religious. However, Nourizad believes that some of the Kurds’ simplest demands have fallen on deaf ears in Iran.
“For instance, the Kurds want to have their own mosque in Tehran and we cannot ignore that demand anymore,” he said. “These kinds of demands are not something that will shatter the Islamic Republic.”
“By giving to the Kurds their rights we can achieve peace and security,” he added. “If we put the Kurds in charge of their own security a single bullet won’t be shot.”
Nourizad said that the peace process in Turkey between Ankara and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) could be a model for Iran.
“In fact, that is my hope and the hope of this society that the Kurdish groups come home as legal political parties as part of an amnesty,” he said. “The groups can put down their weapons and in return the Islamic Republic respects them and gives them insurance.”
But Nourizad says that one should remember that in Iran the intelligence services and military think very differently from those who want peace.
“We don’t know what they are up to,” he said. “It is possible that they want the Kurdish areas to be always instable and under constant security watch.”
