Hüseyin Çelebi Literature Festival held in Basel

The traditional Hüseyin Çelebi Literature Festival organised by the Kurdish student associations YXK/JXK took place in Basel on Saturday. Last year the event had been cancelled due to the Corona pandemic. The Kurdish students organised this year’s festival under the motto “Celebrate literature, art and resistance with us!

The program began with a minute of silence for the martyrs of the Kurdish liberation struggle. In the welcome speech, the organizers talked about the work and cultural activities of Hüseyin Çelebi in Europe. Afterwards a short film about him was shown. Born in Hamburg in 1967 to a Turkish mother and a Kurdish father, Hüseyin Çelebi was enthusiastic about writing from an early age and won a prize for one of his texts while still in elementary school. Later, he became acquainted with the Kurdish liberation struggle and became an active part of the political movement in Germany as a teenager. The period of his political activism in Germany also marked the beginning of the massive persecution of the Kurdish movement by the German state. Huseyin Çelebi was arrested in 1988 and spent his time in prison reading and writing. After his release, he went to Kurdistan in 1991 and joined the guerrillas. He was martyred in October 1992.

At the event in Basel, literary contributions submitted were awarded. In the music program, Dengbêj Ömer, Hozan Şemdin and Koma Hivron performed and there was a lot of dancing.