Walat Qaderi

Dear guests, teachers and writers, Kurdish organizations and media, Kurdish personalities, and activists, welcome to the second Zara Award ceremony to serve the Kurdish language.

I am very honored to be able to serve the language and culture of our nation in such a difficult situation that the Kurdish people are going through. I hope that activities such as the Zara Awards will be able to serve the Kurdish language, linguists, and strugglers of this movement with more innovation year after year.

Looking at the situation of the Kurdish language in the four parts of Kurdistan and the Diaspora, we see that in the past hundred years, Kurdish opponents in all parts of Kurdistan have not allowed Kurdish to become the language of education and have tried to destroy the Kurdish language, art, and culture in every way because of the policy of denial and their power and therefore have had a dangerous impact on the Kurdish language. However, the Kurdish nation in each part of Kurdistan has resisted the policy of the opponents and despite the losses they have suffered in each part of Kurdistan, they have preserved their language, art, and culture as much as they can.

In North Kurdistan, despite systematic attempts to dissolve the Kurdish language and culture and establish legal obstacles to prevent education and speaking in Kurdish, the loyalists of this field have not given up and opened dozens of private institutions and social networking platforms to start a movement standing against the assimilation system. The establishment of several Kurdish publishing houses and the publication of hundreds of Kurdish books, the opening of Kurdish language departments in several universities in North Kurdistan and their advocacy for the implementation of education in schools, the Oath of Independent Youth campaign to Speak in Kurdish, are some examples of the movement.

In East Kurdistan, despite all the problems and obstacles that the Islamic Republic of Iran creates for Kurdish language activists, there is a serious literary activity and movement to promote the Kurdish language, literature, and art by teachers, intellectuals, and artists of our nation. The leaders of the movement have been arrested, imprisoned, and prevented from teaching. For instance, Zara Mohammadi, Mozhgan Kavousi, Saywan Ibrahimi, Idris Minbari, and the latest example of this resistance was the attitude of writers and artists in East Kurdistan after the death of artist Tahir Khalili.

In South Kurdistan, with decades of struggle, the martyrdom of tens of thousands of Peshmergas and hundreds of thousands of civilians in the notorious process of Anfal, chemical attacks, and genocide of Yezidi, Kakayi, and Faily Kurds, while the Kurdish language is recognized as an official language alongside Arabic throughout Iraq, but the biggest conspiracy to dissolve the Kurdish language in the Kurdish areas outside the Kurdistan Region, from Khanaqin and Kirkuk to Shangal (Sinjar) and Mosul, continues.

In West Kurdistan, although the Kurdish language has been officially included in the education system in the areas where Kurdish authority exists with the efforts of the Northern and Eastern Syrian administrations, the occupiers are carrying out a policy of exterminating the Kurdish language in the occupied areas of Afrin, Sarê Kani, and several other areas.

There are serious efforts to serve the Kurdish language abroad among Kurds in the Diaspora using the legal permission of countries. Hundreds of Kurdish teachers, writers, researchers, and poets in the Diaspora are serving the Kurdish language by writing, research, and translation. Also, last year, a Kurdish book publishing house was established in Europe and published many Kurdish books for Kurds in the Diaspora.

It is noteworthy that the opponents of the Kurdish people, in the continuation of genocide, Anfal, chemical attacks, repression, imprisonment, torture, and physical destruction of the Kurds, have quietly started cultural, social, and linguistic genocide of the Kurdish nation to erase our history, language, civilization, and culture. Certainly, this kind of genocide is much more dangerous than the physical genocide of the Kurdish individual because the linguistic cleansing of any nation means the extermination of that nation. Language is the most important pillar of the identity of any nation and the erasure of any nation's language means the nation's death and destruction.

The opponents have established dozens of private institutions and organizations to cover up all the crimes, genocide, and destruction they have committed against Kurds and Kurdistan for years. By allocating huge human and economic capital, using all the tools of social networks, media, the Internet, cinema, and film, the one hand, they try to justify their crimes in the minds of the Kurdish people and public opinion; On the other hand, they put these institutions at the service of their repressive institutions in order to destroy the unity of Kurdish society by division, distrust, and despair among the Kurdish people and to play a destructive role against them.

The opponents are trying to destroy our national will and morale in order to occupy the minds of the Kurdish people through soft warfare and wash away the Kurds from their Kurdish identity so that the Kurds think that their identity is part of the occupier's identity and thus the Kurds completely forget their own identity.

In such a difficult situation, due to the lack of a professional national media for the Kurds that can counter these conspiracies of the invaders of Kurdistan, unfortunately, our opponents in all parts of Kurdistan, have been able to further develop their conspiracies with huge possibilities.

Kurdshop Organization was established to promote Kurdish culture, language, history, and identity, feeling the great threat of the opponents, on the one hand, and the professional gap in the Kurdish media, on the other. Our effort is to stay against the enemies' plan and to develop the Kurdish language and rich culture and all the beautiful and historical values of the Kurdish nation that it has brought and preserved from generation to generation from an ancient civilization and the depths of history.

Kurdshop owns the national will and all the values of Kurdish society to counter the attempts of the invaders to dissolve and erase Kurds and also to thwart the misleading propaganda of Kurdish opponents to defame Kurdish society as backward, extremist, and criminal people. This is a misleading tool of the Kurdistan invaders, not only against the Kurdistan liberation movement, but also against our language, culture, history, and all our national cognitive principles, symbols, and values on which Kurdish identity and civilization are based.

With limited possibilities, but with a national strategic mindset, Kurdshop is trying to preserve and develop Kurdish national identity on a scientific and cognitive basis by using social media platforms.

On this occasion, it is good to ask Kurdish parents wherever they are to choose Kurdish names for their children and educate them in the sweet Kurdish language.

We call on artists, writers, poets, and filmmakers to create Kurdish works. We call on the girls and boys of the country to honor Kurdish dancing by wearing Kurdish clothes, developing national culture and traditions, and taking ownership of their national values and symbols.

We call on Kurds to love the sacred land of our country and to keep the national environment of our ancestors and the historical monuments that are evidence of Kurdish civilization clean.

We call on intellectuals, historians, journalists, and educational and scientific institutions to prevent the invaders from erasing the names of villages, cities, mountains, and historical monuments.

We ask marketers, traders, and merchants to choose Kurdish signs for their shops, companies, business places, schools, universities, hospitals, streets, and alleys to bear Kurdish names and symbols.

In conclusion, I would like to thank the organizing team of the Zara Awards Ceremony and the winner selection committee, who worked tirelessly to select the winner and organize this ceremony.

I also congratulate each person or center that wins the award and wish everyone success.

Have a good day.