TEHRAN, Feb 3 (AFP)  Iran has opened the first cultural centre in Tehran reserved
exclusively for members of the nation's Kurdish minority living in Kurdistan province, according
to a statement Saturday.

"The Kurdistan Cultural Institute is the first of its kind in Iran and the seventh such institution in the
world," director Bahram Valadbeighi said in a copy of the statement from Friday's inauguration.

The institute is to be overseen by a board of directors comprised of Iran's four Kurdish MPs and several
leading Kurdish artists and cultural figures.

Reformist Kurdish MP Jalal Jalalizadeh in November denounced before parliament what he said was a
campaign of repression and serial killings against the six-million-strong Kurdish minority in Iran.

This included prohibition of religious freedom for the Sunni Muslim Kurds, in a country that has a Shiite
Muslim majority, he said.

Although Shiite Islam has been the state religion since the 17th century, the Sunnis account for about
eight million of Iran's roughly 65 million people.

Iran's Democratic Kurdistan Party was officially banned following the 1979 Islamic revolution which
toppled the shah and brought the Shiite clergy to power, and the party's leader
was assassinated in Vienna in 1989.

Different Kurdish factions rebelled against the clergy after the revolution, prompting Islamic Iran's
founder, the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, to put the revolt down by force.
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The Kurdistan Observer
www.kurdistanobserver.com