By Kurdish American Education Society:
The following message was delivered to the French General Consul in Los Angeles on behalf of the Kurdish American Education Society (KAES) and the Kurdish community.
Dear Mr. Axel Acruau:
We members of the Kurdish American Education Society and the larger Kurdish community in Southern California express our revulsion and outrage at the carnage in Paris and condemn the abominable attack on the magazine Charlie Hebdo. We extend our profound condolences to the families of the victims and the French nation whose legacy of freedom of expression has become an inspiration and the cornerstone of democracy in the world. We are appalled that Paris the apogee of democracy has been so brutalized by the Islamist barbarity. We as champions of a civil and secular society, and as victims of the genocidal campaigns of the Islamic State and its pernicious ideology, share your anguish. We are confident that the world community in solidarity with the French nation will now be more determined to defend liberty, the ubiquity and necessity for which in French political and literary history is so well captured by Paul Éluard, the great French poet.
On my notebooks from school
On my desk and the trees
On the sand on the snow
I write your name….
By the power of the word
I regain my life
I was born to know you
And to name you.
Cordially
Dr. Amir Sharifi – President of the Kurdish American Education Society-Los Angeles