Karzan Sherabayani

From Bwtm

In this interview, Karzan Sherabayani, a Kurdish actor and filmmaker, says why he returned to the Kurdish region of Iraq to make his latest film and what he and other Iraqi Kurds think about the recent forced deportations to Iraq.

http://www.irr.org.uk/2006/february/tc000003.html

Contents

When I was 14

When I was 14, Mukhabarat, Saddam's secret police, arrested me and accused me of making anti-Saddam propaganda. My eldest brother Fazil, who was very rich, saved my life by paying a bribe of many thousands. I am very lucky to be alive, thanks to Fazil. Many people were arrested at this time and we never saw them again. I knew if I was arrested again it would be the end, because my name was on the secret police's list. Going to Europe was my best option. I left in 1980 and went to Italy, and after that I settled in London in 1993. Also, to go to university as a Kurd in Saddam's Iraq, you had to belong to them.

http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/rough/2005/06/return_to_kirku_1int.html

tortured for seven days

With a passion for film, young Karzan was building up a profile as an actor, but standing out from the crowd made life difficult. Aged 14, he was captured by the Iraqi secret police and tortured for seven days.

"I thought, 'how can human beings do this?' It is something that forever you ask why they did it. I was surrounded by 12 men. One with a truncheon, one with chains, some throwing water, others kicking and punching me," he says. "My oldest brother paid a huge amount of money to get me out, but I was marked, I was visible, so it was necessary to leave."

http://www.bbk.ac.uk/news/bbkmag/15/life.html

Return to Kirkuk

Twenty-five years ago, when he was 19, Karzan Sherabayani escaped from Iraq, where he had been imprisoned and tortured by Saddam’s secret police. He started a new life in Britain but he has never forgotten his homeland, South Kurdistan, in northern Iraq. Now he returns to his hometown, Kirkuk, where he will participate in Iraq’s first democratic national elections. Karzan is a bold, charismatic and inquisitive man. His journey offers a rare perspective of these turbulent times. It paints a moving picture of this newly liberated Iraq and of those individuals who are still bound up in it’s ethnic struggles.

http://www.vonplanta.net/12_current-projects/current-projects.htm

watch 16minute quicktime


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