One of the many survivors still suffering from the lack of medical attention from the government. Picture courtesy of Awat Rostamyani. All rights reserved. Over the past few decades, Sardasht – a Kurdish city located in the western Azerbaijan province of Iran - has endured too much pain and neglect. The city can best illustrate the dynamics and mechanics of ethnic discrimination and suppression by the Iranian regime against the Kurds.
As a small city, however, Sardasht once had a long and glorious history, one with several episodes of success. For instance, it played a decisive role in the emergence and expansion of Kurdish nationalism during both the Pahlavi and Islamic regimes. Hence, what this city has gone through under the Iranian regime is by no means accidental. Sardasht was the first city that was brutally gassed by Saddam on Jun 28, 1987, during the Iran–Iraq war, a barbarous attack without any military and political justification.
Sardasht is also called the “second Hiroshima” because it was the first city to witness a massacre of unarmed innocent civilians since the atomic bombardment of Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II. Its small population – which hardly amounted to 20,000 people in the 1980s – makes Sardasht’s case unique in a horrifying way.
