Kurdish PJAK rebels kill ten Iranian Revolutionary Guards in Mariwan

Kurdish PJAK rebels kill ten Iranian Revolutionary Guards in Mariwan.

MARIWAN, Iranian Kurdistan,— Kurdish rebels from the Kurdistan Free Life Party (PJAK) killed 10 Iranian Revolutionary Guards in an attack on a post in Mariwan in Iranian Kurdistan (Rojhelat) on Saturday, Iran’s semi-official Tasnim news agency reported, the latest deadly clash in an area where armed opposition Kurdish groups are active, Reuters reported.

It was the latest deadly clash in a region where armed Kurdish groups seeking an independent Kurdistan are active.

The agency quoted a Revolutionary Guards statement as saying that several of the attacking the Kurdish militants were also killed in the fighting in which a munitions depot was blown up.

Provincial security official Hosein Khosheqbal told state television that 11 members of the Guards’ voluntary Basij forces were killed in the overnight violence in the Marivan area, which he blamed on the Kurdish armed opposition group PJAK.

“The latest news is that the Basij and Guards forces are in hot pursuit of the attackers,” Khosheqbal said.

Earlier this month, the Revolutionary Guards said they had killed three militants in a security operation near the border with Iraq, and nine militants were reported killed by the Guards last month further north on the border.

Since 2004 the PJAK (Partiya Jiyana Azad a Kurdistane) took up arms to establish a semi-autonomous Kurdish regional entities or Kurdish federal states in Iran, similar to the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in Iraq. The PJAK has more than 3,000 armed militiamen, half the members of PJAK are women.

PJAK, one of the most active Kurdish group in Iranian Kurdistan, is a member of the Kurdistan Democratic Confederation (Koma Civaken Kurdistan or KCK), which is an alliance of Kurdish groups and divisions led by an elected Executive Council.

The KCK, a political umbrella group linked to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militants.

Kurdish armed groups, such as PJAK, Komala and KDPI, have been in conflict with the Iranian government for decades, and are seeking greater autonomy for the areas inhibited by ethnic Kurds. These armed Kurdish groups are widely spread across the 60-kilometer border with neighboring Iraq.

Ever since its emergence in 1979 the Islamic regime imposed discriminatory rules and laws against the Kurds in all social, political and economic fields.

Iran’s Kurdish minority live mainly in the west and north-west of the country. They experience discrimination in the enjoyment of their religious, economic and cultural rights.

Parents are banned from registering their babies with certain Kurdish names, and religious minorities that are mainly or partially Kurdish are targeted by measures designed to stigmatize and isolate them.

Kurds are also discriminated against in their access to employment, adequate housing and political rights, and so suffer entrenched poverty, which has further marginalized them.

Kurdish human rights defenders, community activists, and journalists often face arbitrary arrest and prosecution. Others – including some political activists – suffer torture, grossly unfair trials before Revolutionary Courts and, in some cases, the death penalty.

Estimate to over 12 million Kurds live in Iranian Kurdistan.

(With files from Reuters)