Kurdistan Human Rights Network (June 6 2017): Over the past few days, all versions of the Kurdish language instruction book (in Kurmanji) has been banned by the Intelligence Service in Khorasan Razavi province, despite having permission from the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance.
Alireza Sepahi Laeen, a Kurdish known journalists and authors of Northern Khorasan in an open letter said ban of this book is a tragic geographic event that is hard to believe for civilised people and patriotic.
The author added do you remember during presidential election debate (2017) the sentence “Kurdish Language was liberated by God” became famous and people were making jokes about it and were kept saying “God allowed it”? Maybe it was a joke and the speakers and the listeners didn’t take it seriously. But while the elections joy not subsided in the hearts of voters, publishing a hundred pages Kurdish booklet (Kurmanji) faced with the anger of the intelligence officers in this country and the author, publishes and buyer and reader all have been faced persecution and threats.
It should to be mentioned candidates argued about the role of the current government in launching a Kurdish language education in the country during the presidential election debate (2017) and Mr. Raeesi Said “How come you think you were the one who allowed Kurdish language (to be taught)? God allowed it. The constitution has allowed that they use their language and their alphabet and their (traditional) outfits. People were making jokes about it and keep were saying “Kurdish Language was liberated by God”.
Nivisin u xwendina: Kurdiya kurmanci,
The book’s authors, regarding the cause of the banned book, announced the only excuse provided by the intelligence officers is using the Latin alphabet in this book that the orthography follows by the Kurdish organisations and it was not in the benefit of Iran to allow the publication of books written in the Latin alphabet. The Kurmanji dialect uses the Latin alphabet. While the script is authorised and used in the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting TV (Sahar) and just not permitted for us!”.
The Kurdish author, Alireza Sepahi Laeen, has been arrested in 2011 and has been held in detention for 8 months on charges of writing critical poems against the Islamic Regime of Iran. He unveiled the continuing pressures of the security forces on Kurds and cultural-literary activists in northern Khorasan. He added that The security forces against the Kurdish authors, collecting books, preventing the cultural meeting, prohibiting the names of writers on the TV and stopping poet to read their poems and in Khorasan.
Laeen added the Kurdish authors must stop writing and publishing their work in accordance with the standards of Kurdish linguistic in Khorasan or if they want to write in the taste of security offices they have to forget about the scientific principles Or completely not publishing their books.
The book, Nivisin u xwendina: Kurdiya kurmanci, which translates to Reading and writing: Kurdish Kurmanji, was written by four authors, Jawad Aliniya, Abas Ismaeli, Mohammed Taqawi, Mehdi Jaafarzadeh in 2015 and was licensed by the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance and published by Amo Alavi publications last month.
