Discrimination of the Kurds: Also in Denmark
To be discriminated against is not a good feeling. It hurts. Especially if you experience it in a modern and democratic country like Denmark.
My family and I came to Denmark ten years ago as political refugees. After ten years of waiting and struggling to make myself deserve the Danish citizenship and hereby a Danish passport, I’m now a citizen and also have a passport, but there is a problem. A problem I never thought I would have in Denmark.
As a Kurdish stateless citizen, I couldn’t be free of being called Iranian. I feel discriminated by the Danish passport law. Discrimination of the Kurds in countries like Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria is well known, and has been systematically performed by governments in these countries, but when it happens in a country like Denmark it’s unacceptable.
Some days ago I went to the Danish authorities to apply for a Danish passport, because I had just been given the citizenship and the travel document I had is not valid anymore. For my new passport I wanted to delete the name of Iran as birthplace and instead write the name of my village or city. But I couldn’t.
My reasons for not wanting to have Iran as place of birth in my new passport are as following:
– I was one year old when the regime threw me and my family out of Iran
– I have no official papers from Iran
– The Iranian regime is killing and suppressing the Kurdish people
– I have been fighting the Iranian regime in many years as a PDKI member
– The Iranian regime has exercised terror actions which are still active
– I see myself a stateless Kurd and not as an Iranian.
– Iran has a bad reputation, and the regime is known for its brutality.
Because of these reasons and many others I feel uncomfortable by having “Iran” in my passport. I can’t change it because the Danish law will not allow it. I feel it’s a discrimination, and the law has to be changed. It’s once again the fate of the Kurds as a nation without country, without rights to be discriminated against worldwide.
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Comments
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Even though I understand your motivations to change the place of birth in your passport, I don’t think your case has anything to do with discrimination. I don’t know if I’m wrong here but the place of birth in your passport is simply telling people were you were born and not necessarily what nation you belong to. I don’t think you should be able to change the place of birth in the same way you can’t change your date of birth.
evin, I don’t think the Danish state is discriminating either but it is worth noting that Denmark have in the past changed the place of birth from the name of the country to the city where the person was born.
Denmark takes great care not to discriminate against its citizens so the writer’s question is just why Denmark does not allow the city to be listed as place of birth.
The passport has a great symbolic meaning to some people, therefore it is understandable that the writer of this piece feels Iran, the country which treated him and his family bad, should not be written in his passport.