UoH marks International Mother Language Day
In the framework of its cultural activities the University of Halabja has marked the International Mother Language Day and conducted a number of activities on February 20th,2023 at Dr. Mustafa Zalmi Hall, the event attended by Prof.Dr.Mahabad Kamil Abdualla,UoH President,Mr. Azad Tofiq,Governor of Halabja and His Deputy, representative of Minister of Cultural and Youth, a number of public and political figures, representatives of organization’s and intellectual people that came from the Halabja and surrounding area. Siyachamana club with the coordination of Directorate of activities of UoH and sponsored by Rebaz Foundation held this event with the slogan of “Mother Language is our National Identity”
The event started with standing one moment silently for the soul of Martyrs, later the UoH president gave a welcome speech and stated that at the aim of marking the International Mother Language Day we organized this event.
She further added “Kurdish nation with its language has gone through many disastrous, but we resisted because we preserved our language and our language kept our identity”, she also mentioned that a number of academicians will talk about Kurdish Language scientifically in several panels.
At the same time , she explained that according to Human Rights Convention Article 2, Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, color, sex, language, to study and write in his/her mother language tongue, and no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, although throughout history Kurdish people has paid the price for securing this right.
At the end of her speech , Dr.Mahabad thanked Syachamana club and Rebaz Foundation for their cooperation in conducting these activities as well as stressed that the other activities to commemorate the Mother Language Day will continue at UoH.
Then, Governor of Halabja ,Mr. Azad Tofiq delivered a speech and congratulated the International Mother Language Day especially oppressed nations, which Kurdish nation is still one of them , he highlighted that Kurdish people are heroic and constantly defend their language, further he stated “Language, land, Homland,Culture and History are five main pillars of existence of a nation/nationhood and the most important one is Language”.
Later, the representative of Rebaz Foundation briefed the richness of Halabja in terms of Language, literature and culture and said that “ we are happy that we coordinated in holding this event and we will give more importance to Halabja in the future”.
The second part of the event was consist of 4 sessions and different topics were presented:
The first session was presented by Mr.Auib Kwekha Rostam on the Signs of Kurdishness in Yarsan Religion, he explained the kurdish of Yarsan religion in reference to Mawlawi poetry.
The second session was presented by lecturer Mr.Jamal Bedar,he said that our language is gradually disappearing ,and this is a harsh reality ,especially after what UNISCO has announced that the language of minorities are facing extinction.
In addition ,he stated that beside studying Kurdish,Arabic and Kurmanji languages ,we hope that Hawramy dialect to be studied at Hawram areas often in a week which he believed will not cause any inconvenience to the Sorani dialect,if not the Hawraman people are been treated unfairly in this respect.
The third session was dedicated to the Importance of Dictionary which was presented by Lecturer Mr.Salim, he highlighted that the absence of dictionary means the absence of a nation, and said “if words are not collected we cannot talk about language, because every nation is evaluated based on their dictionaries or heritage”, besides, he suggested that those events or words which are neither registered nor collected should be collected.
The last session was presented by Ms.Shahrazad Naeib, she discussed the scientific measures the linguists have put in place for the existence of a language and how to be preserved and protected from extinction, she stressed that hopefully Kurdish languages meets all the requirements they have set.
After that, UoH president and the representative of Organizations have awarded the logo of culture and tradition to Minister of Culture and Youth Mr.Hamay Hama Saeed, who was received by the General Director of Culture and Art Directorate as his representative.
After receiving the award , he read the Minister’s speech and congratulated the International Mother Language Day and thanked the organizers of this event, he mentioned that the Minister apologizing due to his Governmental duties ,he couldn’t attend the ceremony , the representative said that his Highness ‘s aim is to serve Language and Literature more .
