On Wednesday, April 23, 2025, Yale University in the U.S. state of Connecticut hosted a special conference dedicated to the genocides committed against the Kurdish people. Dr. Mohammed Ihsan, a Kurdish politician and academic, read President Masoud Barzani’s official message to the conference participants.
President Barzani described the study and remembrance of the Kurdish genocides under Iraq’s former regime as “a deeply significant and emotional subject.” In his message, he emphasized that “the sole purpose of these genocides was to erase Kurdish identity. The objective was to break the will of a people whose only demand was to live freely, to develop their lives peacefully, and who had committed no crime other than wanting to exist in peace.”
He stated: “In addition to the direct atrocities, the 20th century saw systematic policies of ethnic cleansing — including mass displacement, forced resettlement, demographic engineering in various regions of Kurdistan, and the destruction of the rural economy — all aimed at erasing the Kurdish national identity.”
Regarding the absence of a sovereign Kurdish state, President Barzani noted: “The people of Kurdistan — a nation of tens of millions with an ancient history and a living identity — remain one of the largest stateless nations in the world, living in the Middle East without an independent state. This historical statelessness has exposed the Kurds to repeated campaigns of persecution and annihilation, leaving them without the means to defend themselves against hostility and war.”
In another part of his message, he wrote: “The Kurdish people have lived on their ancestral land for thousands of years and have upheld a culture of coexistence with other ethnicities and religious communities. They have always been advocates of peace, stability, and human dignity. Yet what this nation endured in the 20th century was a coordinated and systematic effort to deny them a historical, cultural, and human identity.”
The Kurdish Globe