a kurd set fire to himself in protest

[ChiChalok]

[Vladimir]

The majority isn't smart Tomjez. But off course.. the Kurds can choose between two things there: bad and even worse..

So better to have some education and future.. then nothing.

[Piling]

IF THEY HAVE CITIZENSHIP! Rolling Eyes

Well, fortunately not all Syrian Kurds had been deprived of their citizenship. It could about 400.000 people (and that is much all the same). But even these Kurds non-citizens go to school and universities, they have a special non-syrian card for that, and they can be registered with a kind of foreign status.

[dyaoko]

Tom do you say that person has set fire to himself because he has read apo's books ?

I belive kurds, specially northern kurds, hardly read books, we kurds are a lazy nation we dont study , we dont write , [ thats why we dont have any written history of ourself]

the reason that guy has set fire to himself is not reading apo's book , I am sure.

he is just full sadness , and this sadness has made him sick and think that if he fire himself , he can reduce that pain and get some attention...

it is not because of books.

[Piling]

Dyaoko, in ERNK and all the PKK associations, people have to listen a lot of propaganda, course, etc. When you talk in a PKK office or associaition, whatever you ask, you have the same answer from everybody, from the Chairman to the man who brought tea ans sweaps the building. They have the same statements, the same opinion, for they have to learn the same "political line." It is like a sect, brainwashing, brainwashing...

Moreover the question of PKK self-burning is subtle. In 97-98, in Roma, Öcalan has forbidden them for his councellors told him that it gave a bad image of him, like a "guru". But some people did it all the same. It was by despair, I suppose. But is was not officially supported by the Presidence.

Nowadays, I don't know if the PKK support or not these actions. I think it is more complicated than "dying for Apo." Many Kurds in diaspora, in the party, have a very bad and hard life. Some youth come back to the guerilla for the same reasons : they see the corruption and the stupidness of the party, and they are not able to accept that their ideal has been betrayed. So they rather die in a heroic way.

Some others, after many years in the Parti, and many psychological pressures, and self-confessions, or prison (in the party) and after having lived in fear because they fall in love with a girl, or because they have some political ideas that the hierarchy does not like, etc., etc. are psychologically destroyed.

Others believed in the Party, or they want to believe in spite of all. But it is very difficult to keep their faith, when they hear some Öcalan's statement, or when they see that nothing changes. Or perhaps just because it is not easy to live in exile, and if they want to commit suicide, they decide, at least to make something of that.

So behind a such suicide, we could have many explanations. It is very rash to pretend to know why a PKK member did a such act.