Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou

  
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http://www.saradistribution.com/abdurahmanqasimlo.htm



The Legacy of Abdulrahman Ghassemlou, 25 Years After His Assassination
24/7/2014
Rudaw
By Asso Hassan Zadeh

Dr Abdulrahman Ghassemlou, Secretary General of the Iranian Kurdistan Democratic Party was assassinated 25 years ago by the very people who were supposed to discuss with him, on behalf of the Islamic Republic, a political solution to the Kurdish issue in Iran.

Ghassemlou had devoted his entire life to the freedom of the Kurdish people and did everything to make this cause known at times when the Kurds were being repressed, their rights denied, and the international community was barely conscious of their plight and existence.

Ghassemlou’s charisma and exceptional and multifaceted personality is not the only reason that he is still so present in the political mind and collective memory of the Kurds, especially in Iran. It is also because Ghassemlou's story is a living and continuing story.

Ghassemlou imbued the cause of the Kurds in Iran with a number of features that made it more than a cause for their national rights. He embodied the very antithesis of the philosophy of governance of the Islamic Republic. The effectiveness of his struggle led the Iranian regime to put him as a main target on the list of opponents to be eliminated. Ghassemlou’s assassination marked the beginning of an intensive wave of killing opponents abroad in the aftermath of the Iran-Iraq war.

In a polarized Middle East Ghassemlou maintained rationality and balance. He wanted to be a conciliator of tensions and contradictions surrounding the Kurdish issue and the question of democracy in the region.

Ghassemlou who would later become an oriental Marxist and a nationalist leader, was born in 1930, to an Assyrian Christian mother and a feudal lord father who had been active in the creation of the Kurdish Republic of Mahabad in 1946.

Though he came from an underdeveloped society, when he began his dissident activities against the Shah's regime, Ghassemlou followed the path of modernity and knowledge in Paris and Prague where he studied Economics and Political Science. But his spirit and love for knowledge were such that his expertise went far beyond the scope of his specialty. Speaking a dozen languages, he was also accomplished in history and literature. Those who met him felt to be in the presence of a living encyclopedia of culture.

Ghassemlou was also a man of action, with rare courage and a great sense of initiative and risk-taking. Whether during his early academic life or political career, his courageous position often put him in difficult situations. Nevertheless, he always preferred this option than to trample his own principles the most important of which was political independence. He would never accept support or an alliance at the expense of his independence.

Ghassemlou was a firm believer in the Kurds’ right to self-determination so far as to say that if one day the Kurds were to one day establish an independent state encompassing all the Kurds, it wouldn’t constitute secession, but reunification. However, his understanding of the complexity of the Kurdish question and geopolitical realities of his time pushed him to strive for the national rights of the Kurds within a democratic Iran.

Inscribing his struggle within the boundaries of Iran did not make him indifferent to the need of solidarity between the Kurds of other countries. He believed that the Kurdish movement in every part of Kurdistan should keep in mind the interests of Kurds in other parts, especially in the context of their relations with the governments of the countries they lived in.

Despite his strong convictions and clear principles, Ghassemlou was a pragmatic politician who wouldn’t submit to the dictates of dogma. The deeply secular man that he was, following the 1979 Islamic revolution, he was still elected as the only lay representative to the first constituent assembly (Council of Experts). Iranian KDP candidates were also elected in the first parliamentary elections. However, the new regime invalidated their election and Ghassemlou never attended the sessions of the Assembly because of threats to his life by Ayatollah Khomeini.

Ghassemlou always preferred political and peaceful solutions. Even after Khomeini issued the fatwa to attack Iranian Kurdistan, Ghassemlou agreed to begin negotiations with a regime he considered anachronistic. He did this, once again, at the end of the Iran-Iraq war. But it turned out that the first negotiations were only a tactic by the regime to buy time to regain control of the Kurdish areas, and the second negotiations were a trap to kill Ghassemlou himself.

Political morality, so dear to Ghassemlou, also applied internationally. Despite the Communist domination of the world where had lived and studied, he did not hesitate to take a stand against the Soviet intervention in Czechoslovakia in 1968. Nor did he hesitate to condemn the hostage taking at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in 1979. Given the anti-imperialist climate then, these stances were simply outstanding. Later, in the 1980s, while leading an armed resistance against the Iranian regime, he introduced “Democratic Socialism” into his party program. His goal was to distance himself and his party from the existing Socialism --particularly for its lack of democracy-- and also to better justify and facilitate the support he was seeking from the West.

Ghassemlou was the Kurdish leader who most contributed to internationalizing the Kurdish question. At a time when the outside world showed very little interest in the Kurdish cause, he thought that Kurds could not afford to base their external relations on purely ideological criteria. Hence, he developed friendly relations with European social democrats --most of whom remained very impressed by his extraordinary personality and vision. He was also supposed to go to the United States a week after the date he was assassinated. Despite the just and progressive character of Ghassemlou's struggle, the attention and support he obtained was only humanitarian.

Ghassemlou was passionate about life, a great humanist and a true democrat. He was opposed to the cult of personality and could live in harsh conditions like his Peshmargas. He believed that the struggle for national rights of the Kurdish people must not neglect ideals of social justice and equality, especially between men and women.

Fighting against a regime that had no regard for its own precepts or the international laws, he would say, should not make us violate our own values and human dignity. Thus he taught his Peshmargas to treat prisoners well, release them systematically, and refrain from terrorist methods, even though he knew this would mean a lack of interest in the world media.

For Iranian Kurds Ghassemlou's story is continuous because it represents an open wound. Not only they decry a crime that deprived them of an exceptional leader by abusing his good faith. They are also outraged by the scandal and injustice committed by the Austrian government that not only freed two of the murderers but also escorted one of them to the Iran Air flight at the airport.

There has been no justice, and no judiciary pursuit to this crime. But the economic and security blackmail to which the Austrian government surrendered could not prevent the German courts to declare in 1997, during the Mykonos Trial on the assassination of Ghassemlou's successor, Sadeq Sharafkandi, that the highest leaders of the Islamic Republic were responsible for the terror machine set up to eliminate its opponents abroad.

Today, Iranian Kurds feel anger and disappointment by the fact that the international community continues to turn a blind eye to their fate and that the whole question of human rights and democracy in Iran is still neglected and overshadowed by dealings between the Iranian regime and the international community around security issues.

To allow the reinstatement of Ghassemlou's murder case is not only fair and moral, but also politically productive. There will be no lasting or genuine international peace and harmony - on which national security and even economic interests of western powers depend - unless there are in the Middle East responsible governments who first respect the rights of their own citizens.

While the Middle East is in more turmoil than ever and new windows seem to be opening to the Kurdish question, all those who knew Ghassemlou believe that he was ahead of his time and that history has missed its date with him.

* Member of the Central Committee of KDP





Ghassemlou the Wise: Passionate Ambassador of a Desperate Cause
Posted on Medya News on 13 July 2011
Marc Kravetz

(Translated from Libération, August 7, 1989)

Abdel Rahman Ghassemlou, murdered in Vienna on July 13th 1989, was in every way an exceptional man, both as leader of one of the oldest and most deeply rooted national liberation movements and in his personal magnetism – his international influence, his rare if not unique ability to express the traditions and the struggle of a thousand-year-old people in terms of the values of the late 20th century: freedom, democracy, internationalism. But he was little known to the public, and many will have learned simultaneously of his existence and of his death.

Ghassemlou was not a man of shadows, nor surrounded by mystery. The Secretary General of the Democratic Party of Kurdistan of Iran, war leader when necessary but political leader above all, he saw himself as a man of contact and dialogue. He was a passionate and tireless ambassador for this cause, who travelled all over the world to make it better known. But he was happiest sharing mud hut with his peshmergas at the bottom of some remote valley on the Iran-Iraq border, where he was constantly on the move, taking his library with him.

He liked good books and good wine – but could do without the latter more easily than the former – and was at ease at a Parisian table as in the spartan loneliness of the harsh mountain winter. At nearly sixty, he would have been 59 next December, he combined the serenity of an eastern sage with the dynamism of a youth, the curiosity of an encyclopaedist with the appetite of a bon vivant. As firm in his convictions as he was pragmatic in action, Ghessemlou seemed to reconcile without strain the toughness required for a political-military struggle and the elegant scepticism derived from his long academic career.

He had a doctorate in economics, loved history and literature and was an expert on Kurdish, Persian and Arabic poetry; he also readily quoted Victor Hugo, Baudelaire, Walt Whitman or T.S. Eliot. Warm, open, approachable, using irony and humour as easily as the six or seven languages he spoke and wrote fluently, he inspired the same reaction in everyone who met him. Sympathizers with his movement, intellectuals, doctors, ministers, ambassadors, politicians of left or right. All, even if recalling only one long-ago conversation, admit that they fell for his charm. Few people in this century could boast such unanimity.

Ghassemlou began his political life as a communist in the Iranian Tudeh party, in which he rose to a position of leadership. After 15 years in Prague teaching economics, he broke with the Communist Party in August 1968 over the Soviet intervention in Czechoslovakia. Though he abandoned the certainties of Marxist dogma he did not renounce his background. Rather, he examined its mistakes as he analysed the political situation to understand where and when justice had slipped into injustice and truth into error, or even horror, and to draw the moral conclusion. He was particularly well placed to know the difficulties of political struggle in a society that was “backward”, as he used to say, because, from being cut off from the world and deprived of its right of decision and expression, even when of access to its own culture. But he was not prepared to use underdevelopment as an ideological justification for all kinds of excesses, such as the cult of violence for its own sake, the cult of the leader in an organization, or the dictatorship of an organization over the people.

Nor could he adopt the idea that it is quite all right to use one language for public relations and the media, and then forget about it in the field. His great pride, as he was never tired of saying, was that as far as humanly possible the ideals of the movement were reflected in its everyday conduct. The PDKI has never mistreated prisoners, never used force against civilians, never taken hostages, never hijacked aircraft or planted bombs in the buses or markets of the “enemy” towns, let alone outside the war zone. Though by no means a pacifist, Ghassemlou opposed terrorism on principle, knowing  that he paid a price for that and sometimes remarking, with just a hint of bitterness, that it explained why the media showed so little interest in the Kurdish question. “Any little group can become famous by taking hostages or planting bombs,” he once wrote, “whereas liberation movements which abstain from terrorism are generally ignored.”

In November 1979 Ghassemlou condemned, on the very first day, the seizure of the diplomats and staff of the US Embassy in Tehran. For him the liberation of Iran from American control, or the Third World from great-power imperialism as the PDKI programme put it, was the objective of a long-term political struggle which entailed freedom and democracy for all.

Yet, contrary to the accusations of the Tehran regime, Washington was not won over to the Kurdish cause. Though American diplomacy had indeed been active during the Kurdish war in Iraq (1961-1975), for geostrategic reasons which Dr. Kissinger explains at length, and quite cynically in his memoirs, it never lifted a finger for the Kurds of Iran. Ghassemlou himself was banned from entering the US until the month of his death, when he was for the first time granted a visa. Just before leaving for Vienna he was preparing very carefully for his trip to the US, where he hoped to do a great deal to publicise the Kurdish problem, though he had no great illusions about the likely political result.

He knew all too well that however great the sympathy felt by a certain educated world opinion for the Kurdish cause, (not only that of the 5 million Iranian Kurds but of the 25 million scattered through five countries) the cause would never mobilise the diplomacy of the great powers, nor even of the European democracies, since they were concerned primarily with their own regional interests. He had learned this during his frequent travels abroad, especially in Europe. For although generally respected, he was rarely welcome in official circles. At best, by playing on old friendships and exploiting his membership of the Socialist International, he would now and then secure a little humanitarian aid for his people. Or, by whispering in a generous ear, would manage to resolve a problem of special importance to him. Jean-François Deniau, a minister in the Giscard government, described with some emotion how Ghassemlou had at one time laid siege of his office to get the French government to back a new edition of the only French-Kurdish dictionary, which had long been out of print.

He was a realist. I remember him telling me once that at the end of a century notable for the assertion and precarious stabilisation of different nationalisms it was no good expecting to “explode the map to allow the Kurds to build themselves an independent state on the ruins of three others”. So he demanded autonomy for Iranian Kurdistan, not independence for the Kurds. But his opponents in Tehran assumed that this was only a hypocritical tactic, crudely disguising a separatism which dared not speak its name – the first step towards a “Greater Kurdistan” uniting the Kurds of Iran, Iraq, Turkey, even Syria and the USSR. On this point, “laymen” such as [former Iranian president] Bani-Sadr were in full agreement with the fundamentalist mullahs.

Ghassemlou’s death warrant was signed as early as 1979, when he was elected as the only self-confessed secularist in Iran’s “constituent” assembly. For security reasons he refused to go to Tehran. Ayatollah Khomeiny publically regretted his absence in a televised speech, adding: “What a shame. We could have arrested him and had him shot at once.” July 13th 1989, the day when Muslims celebrated the Id al-Kabir or “feast of pardon”, was also observed by Shiites as the 40th day of mourning for the Imam. Was that only a coincidence? Or did the murderers, disguised as peace envoys with an official mandate from [former Iranian president] Hashemi-Rafsanjani and passports signed by [former Foreign Minister] Velayati, come from Tehran deliberately to carry out the sentence on that ritual day?

Source: “Dr. Abdoul Rahman Ghassemlou,” (Paris: Institut Kurde De Paris, Information and Liaison Bulletin, Special Issue 75 FF, July-August 1989), pp. 7-





The life and death of Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou (1930-1989)
http://www.pdk-iran.org/english/doc/kasemlu.htm
Abdul Rahman GHASSEMLOU

MAN of PEACE
and
DIALOGUE
ul Rahman Ghassemlou, the Secretary-General of the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan (PDKI), was born on 22 December 1930 in Ourmiah, Kurdistan.  He went to university in Paris and later Czechoslovakia, had a Doctorate in economics and was an associate professor, having taught in Prague and Paris.

In 1941, the Allies invaded Iran in a 'bridge of victory" operation that inevitably brought about the downfall of Reza Shah because of his relations with the Axis powers. A major political change was to take shape in the country.  In Iranian Kurdistan the national movement came back to life and the PDKI founded on 16 August 1945, attracted young people in its masses. One of them was Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou - not yet 15 years old. On 22 January 1946 the Kurdish Republic of Mahabad came into existence by proclamation, but in December of the same year the imperial army with the help of the Western forces entered the city, and the killing and arrests that followed were as cruel as they were indiscriminate. The Republic had fallen; its President, Qazi Mohammad, and his close followers were taken prisoner, and then put to death on 30 March 1947.

Little by little the Kurdish people re-gathered their strength.  The Republic of Mahabad may have been short-lived but in the collective memory it did not die. Running unlimited risks, the Kurdish leaders set about the vast task of protecting, educating and organising the population. Back from Europe in 1952, Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou devoted his energies to these clandestine activities for several years. In the next decade, he split his time between Europe and Kurdistan working in double harness: his university career and his repeated missions to Kurdistan.
In 1959, the regional context appeared to be more hopeful; in neighbouring Iraq, the monarchy had been overthrown, and Molla Mostafa Barzani (leader of the Democratic Party of Iraqi Kurdistan) had returned to his country after eleven years of exile in former USSR. The government in Baghdad accepted the principle of autonomy for the Kurdish population of Iraq.


On the other side of the frontier, the PDKI steeled itself to renew the struggle. In 1968-69, the armed conflict was rife in Iranian Kurdistan and the period ended in a bath of blood with the massacre of the Kurdish leaders - and yet, even then, Kurdish resistance managed to raise its head again.The vice-like grip in which the Shah's armies were trying to hold it had to be broken. At the third Congress of the PDKI (1973), Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou was elected Secretary-general and at those that followed he was invariably returned to office.

During the years that followed, the prestige of the Pahlavi monarchy continued to wane. The White Revolution was questioned by experts in international affairs; the greedy demands and extravagant behaviour of the court were criticised in the press, and the SAVAK was active throughout the country with no social class being spared its baneful attentions. Clearly, the regime was doomed.  If that happened, what should be the position of PDKI ? In view of the complex nature of the problems in the region that position had to be clear-cut. The Party had to reply unambiguously to a number of questions about its identity, its allegiances, its aspirations and its options. Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou and his aides drew up as coherent and realistic a programme as they could which may be summarised, in essence, as follows :

- We are Kurds, we belong to a people that the vicissitudes of history have scattered over five states. A bond of brotherhood binds us, and will continue to bind us, to all other Kurds, wherever they live.
- We are the descendants of one of the oldest Indo-European civilisations. Our identity is defined by the fact that we have our own language and our own culture.
- We are the citizens of a country called Iran - on the same basis of the other peoples living on the Iranian territory : the Baluchs, Persians, Azeris, Arabs, Turkmens and so on.
- We are ardent defenders of the Declaration of Human Rights and the right of peoples as defined by the United Nations.
- We are for the freedom of worship and we respect all religions practiced by our co-citizens. Faith is an inviolable right. However, being resolutely modern in our outlook, we feel that a separation between the religious institutions and the state is desirable. A lay state is not, on that account, opposed to the faith or to those that serve it.
- For the living conditions of all to be improved, and customs from long ages past condemning women to a state of inferiority to be ended.
- To accelerate development in our country, it is necessary to establish a system providing free education of uniform quality throughout the country. A special effort should be made in the peripheral areas (Kurdistan, for example) that are clearly a long way behind.
- No attempt to leave poverty behind will succeed without the active participation of the people themselves. To feel concerned - so we believe - they have to feel free. Freedom of movement for goods and persons, freedom of association and freedom to form political parties or unions and to belong to such organisations are the indispensable preconditions for economic and cultural development. - For there to be trust between the population and the central authority, large-scale decentralisation is necessary.
- In Kurdistan's case, that decentralisation has to comprise a charter of autonomy for the region whose boundaries would need to be precisely defined. Within this Kurdish space, the administrative languages should be Kurdish and Farsi, which would both be official languages of the regional and local authorities. Primary education should be in Kurdish whereas the two official languages should be routine practice in secondary school. Lastly, after so many years of violence, the Kurdish people could not accept a police force that was not manned by Kurds. It is only on these conditions that there would be any chance of lasting peace in Iranian Kurdistan.
- Lastly, the "kurdification" of the administrative and 'production structures would demand major investment in the training of senior officials and staff and also - it goes without saying - a multidisciplinary university on Kurdish land.
In other words, what the leaders of the PDKI demand is genuine and effective autonomy. Unfortunately, as everyone knows, dictatorships hide behind pyramid-shape structures excluding all horizontal communication. Feeling themselves perpetually threatened (as indeed they are), they seek the support of foreign powers which, in the end, become their masters. Dictators are not free and they abuse the freedom of others. So the autonomy of Iranian Kurdistan would be utopian unless Iran made the change to democracy. Without democracy in Iran there could be no guarantee for autonomy in Kurdistan.
Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou saw that these two concepts were inseparable and so they became the watchword of the PDKI: Democracy for Iran, autonomy for Kurdistan.

This policy statement in which chauvinism and sectarianism had no part won the PDKI the firm friendship of Third World countries and modern democracies alike. During his many trips abroad, Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou was always sure of a warm welcome. Many humanitarian organisations offered him help, eminent figures on the world stage in political and university life thought highly of him and human rights and religions militants encouraged him throughout his life. It was thanks to him that the Iranian Kurds were able to emerge from their isolation and make their voice heard in the international fora.  Some of these sympathisers were surprised that the Iranian Kurds had "such modest" demands after such a bitter struggle.  "It is really autonomy you want - nothing more ?" was a not uncommon reaction.

No secret clause was ever planned or hidden in this blueprint for autonomy because it was the fruit of long and profound thought about the world political context following World War Il. The Kurdish leaders took the view that major changes to frontiers were ruled out and that the general trend was towards the formation of large groupings rather that the fragmentation of existing units. In any case, once peace was restored, it would surely be natural for countries with common borders to seek to develop trade and cultural exchange. Therefore, in the long term,  the existence of big Kurdish communities in various parts of the Middle East could be a positive factor in inter-regional relations. Everyone would stand to gain. It is well known that the big exporting countries pay considerable attention to the ethnic minorities, which often act as bridgeheads or relay stations in campaigns to win a foothold in new markets.
In short, the Kurdish thinkers concluded that only the short-sighted could see ethnic, linguistic or religious diversity as an obstacle to development. In the future the big middle-eastern house would derive its energy from the many different elements of which it was built. This pattern was particularly true of Iran itself with its 45 million inhabitants of which only 40 % were of Persian origin. (Today Iran has over sixty million inhabitants). At that time, towards 1975, this type of thinking sounded at least advanced, not to say fanciful. The Kurds were still under the heel of the Shah, but nothing is eternal, dictators included.
One day in February 1979 Mohammed Reza Pahlavi finally gave up the throne. At that time the PDKI had a solid base and a real impact in Iranian Kurdistan. However, to run the territory properly and control its administration the police had to be removed and the army thrown out down to the very last man. This was the task of the "peshmergas" or partisans, who attacked army barracks and seized large stocks of arms and ammunition.  Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou was then able to claim that, in a large part of Kurdistan, the Kurds were their own masters.

It was reasonable to hope that the Iranian revolution would have brought men to power able to realise that the interests of the central authority and those of the Kurds were compatible. Elections were planned and a new constitution was being written for the country.

Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou was elected to the Assembly of experts and made ready to carry to the capital the message of the Kurds - a simple message: there is room for all in this country where everything needs doing or re-doing.  Imam Khomeini, unfortunately, saw things differently, he labelled the newly elected representative of the Kurds an "enemy of God" and declared a "holy war" on Kurdistan. This was in 1979. Sudden though it was, this call to arms was, in retrospect, not surprising. How, after all, could this grim gerontocrat with the cruelty of another age be prepared to give his attention to the history and wants of the Kurds ? How could Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou be expected to stay silent at the hostage-taking, occupation of foreign embassies and other terrorist activities launched in 1979 by an Imam who had recently returned from Neauphle-le-Château to sow the seeds of hate and insanity.

The Gulf War broke out the following September. Perhaps these unsubdued Kurds would be forgotten during this conflict between Iran and Iraq (1980-88). On the contrary, in fact, it cost them dearly, for their villages lay on either side of the frontier where the fighting was at its fiercest. They were accused, too, of being anti-patriotic : their settlements were destroyed and the people living there reduced to a wandering existence. The ultimate purpose of these crimes against humanity was obvious : to use the war as an excuse for exterminating a people whose authenticity was denied as strongly as it was proclaimed by the Kurds.

Iran came out of the war with Iraq exhausted and the Imam at death's door. The facts had to be faced and Tehran had to find a compromise in Kurdistan.  For his part, Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou had been saying for years that the fighting had been imposed on him, that neither side would ever lose or win and that, sooner or later, the Kurdish problem would have to be solved across the negotiating table. After flying a few kites, Tehran issued a concrete proposal for a meeting in Vienna on 28 December 1988 and the PDKI accepted.  The talks lasted two days, 28 and 30 December and the results must have been promising because it was agreed to hold another meeting the following January. On 20 January, at the end of the first round of negotiations, the representatives of Tehran were fully acquainted with the Kurdish demands. The principle of autonomy seemed to have been agreed. The details of how it was to be put into effect had yet to be defined.

Six months later, Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou returned to Europe to attend a congress of the Socialist International. Tehran tried to contact him again in order, he was told, to pursue the negotiations that had begun the previous winter. The PDKI accepted the offer sent to it. The meeting took place on 12 July 1989 in Vienna. The Tehran delegation was as before, namely Mohammed Jafar Sahraroudi and Hadji Moustafawi, except that this time there was also a third member : Amir Mansur Bozorgian whose function was that of bodyguard. The Kurds also had a three-man delegation : Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou, his aide Abdullah Ghaderi-Azar (member of the PDKI Central Committee) and Fadhil Rassoul, an Iraqi university professor who had acted as a mediator.

The next day, 13 July 1989, in the very room where the negotiation took place Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou was killed by three bullets fired at very close range. His assistant Abdullah Ghaderi-Azar was hit by eleven bullets and Fadhil Rassoul by five. Hadji Moustafawi succeeded in escaping. Mohammad Jafar Sahraroudi received minor injuries and was taken to hospital, questioned and allowed to go. Amir Mansur Bozorgian was released after 24 hours in police custody and took refuge in the Iranian Embassy.

Indignation was at its height.  How, in this age, in the heart of Europe, could it happen for the representatives of a member country of the United Nations to open fire at point blank range on the representatives of a country with whom it was at war and had entered into peace negotiations?
On 19 July two representatives of the political bureau of PDKI came to Paris to attend the funeral. At a press conference they announced, among other things, that the higher authorities of the PDKI had appointed Sadegh Charafkandi to perform the duties of Secretary-general.  Sadegh Sharafkandi (who was also assassinated on 17 September 1992 by the Iranian terrorists) was in his fifties and had a doctorate in industrial chemistry from Paris University. He was Deputy Secretary-general of the Party up to the death of Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou .

The two murdered men of the PDKI were buried on 20 July in Paris in the presence of a throng of some two thousand people from all parts : Kurds and Armenians, Azeris and Turks, Persians and Europeans, poets and doctors, ministers and workpeople, representatives of humanitarian organisations and members of parliament. Leading the funeral procession, the peshmergas in their Kurdish resistance fighters' uniform advanced with difficulty in the torrid heat of the Parisian summer. They were all there, all that had been able to travel on their crutches and in their wheelchairs, having come from the various capitals of Europe where they were recovering, as best they could, from the wounds received in the conflict. Tehran denied all connection with this triple murder and told Austria to look for clues in other directions than Iran. But the findings of the ballistics experts were conclusive.

In late November 1989 the Austrian courts issued a warrant for the arrest of the three Iranian representatives and the Austrian Government expressly accused the Iranian Government as having instigated the attack on Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou and the two other Kurds.

Thus died this man who was no warmonger but a man of letters, master of several languages and persuasive speaker. Overflowing with enthusiasm and energy, he was an intellectual of his time, this end of the twentieth century when the triumph of democracy seems really within reach.