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23 Kurdish Sign Language Zana Jaza 23 Kurdish Sign Language 1 Basic facts about the language Language name: The deaf community uses the term Sign Language or Sign Lan- guage of the deaf. Alternative names: Kurdish Sign Language, abbreviated to ZHK. Location: The Kurdistan region of northern Iraq. Varieties: It is believed in the deaf community that ZHK has three dialects. Number of signers: There is not any reliable source that indicates the number of the signers; estimates vary from 1,000 to 10,000 signers. 2 Origin and history Kurdish Sign Language is the language of the deaf community in the Kurdistan region of northern Iraq. This includes the cities Slemani, Hawler and Duhok,1 where educational institutions for deaf children, called Hiwa, are found. In informal contexts it is usual to hear Kurdish speakers call the language zmani işaret ‘Sign Language’, where the word işaret ‘sign’ is an Arabic loanword, hêma in Kurdish. In formal contexts the Kurdish word amaje is used instead of işaret, and thus the language is called zmani amaje in those contexts. The Arabic ishara can also be used to mean ‘gesture’ and ‘allusion’, and the Kurdish amaje is a translation of these senses of the word. Thus, the translation of zmani amaje will be ‘Gesture Language’ or ‘Allusion Language’. In my opinion, using those terms in the informal and formal contexts is prob- lematic, because it reflects the common misunderstanding that sign language con- sists of simple gestures and is universal. Therefore, instead of işaret and amaje I use the word Hêma ‘sign’. I use the term Zmani Hêmay Kurdi ‘Kurdish Sign Lan- 1 The names of the cities Slemani and Hawler are also written as As Sulaimaniya and Erbil and other spellings of the names exist on Internet pages, and in other sources. The names that are used in this paper are the ones that are used by the Kurds themselves. Zana Jaza, Aarhus University, Denmark, e-mail: [email protected] Unauthenticated Download Date | 5/11/16 3:42 PM 568 Zana Jaza guage’ (henceforth ZHK), since the signers are Kurds and the deaf community be- longs to the Kurdish population historically and culturally. It is believed in the Hiwa institutions that ZHK has distinct dialects in all three of the above mentioned cities, but since sign language in the Kurdistan region has never been investigated before by linguists, it is not clear to what extent the signing is similar within and among the three different cities. However there is certainly a degree of regional variation in the sign language, because of the existence of at least one local deaf community in each city in the region. The local communities have contact with each other through education in the Hiwa institutions and some- times through athletic and cultural events. The variation in the language is noticed in lexical differences according to the deaf signers themselves and also according to a published sign dictionary, which is used in teaching contexts. This paper fo- cuses on the variety used in the ‘Hiwa institution for hearing impaired children’ in the city of Slemani. Official population data in Iraq is not generally available, and the Kurdistan region is no exception. Estimates of the total population in the Kurdistan region are about five million, but there is not any reliable source of information that indi- cates the number of the signers of ZHK. In the sign dictionary (Halim and Russel 2002: 5) the estimate is about 10,000 deaf people in the whole region, and in a register at the Directorate of the Handicapped Affairs in the city of Slemani, 1,050 persons are registered as deaf. However neither source gives a clear idea of the number of signers: both include people with various degrees of hearing impair- ment, and it is not clear how many of them master ZHK or whether their signing is in fact ZHK or rather a form of home sign. The institutions in the three cities have together had approximately 1,000 pupils over the last 30 years, and this num- ber might be the closest estimate to the real number of signers. As has been described for many other sign languages the emergence of ZHK seems to be related to the establishment of the educational institutions for deaf children in Kurdistan. The Hiwa institution in Slemani was established in 1982, and since its establishment it has had 348 pupils. The institution was founded by an administrative section under the Ministry of Social Affairs of the former Iraqi regime. It was considered as an institution for rehabilitation of hearing impaired children, but it also accepted children with other types of physical and mental impairments. This changed in the 1990s, with the intake being limited to children with hearing impairment. The period from the establishment of the Hiwa institution until 2003 was a very hard period for both teaching staff and pupils, and was filled with instability and problems. This was not just because of the difficulties the two groups faced in understanding each other, but also because of the successive wars in which Iraq was involved, and consequences of those wars. Indeed Iraq has never experienced total peace and stability since its establishment as a state following the First World War. There are many reasons for this state of affairs, including the socio-cultural Unauthenticated Download Date | 5/11/16 3:42 PM Kurdish Sign Language 569 diversity of its population (Iraq was a part of the Ottoman empire before the war), and more importantly the fact that its borders and unification into one administra- tive and political unit were not decided by the various ethnicities that had lived in the region for many centuries, but rather by the victors of the war (Tripp 2000: 30– 76; Holden 2012: 53–88). The result has been continuous fights for power and con- trol between the successive authorities and the population on the one hand, and among its various ethnicities on the other hand. In the 1980s Iraq was under the control of Saddam Hussein’s regime. The coun- try was in a fierce war with Iran. The Kurdish population in the north was also in constant opposition to the central government in Baghdad, which was reflected in fights within and around the Kurdish cities between Kurdish partisans and the governmental military forces. The Iraqi regime conducted many operations of ex- pulsion against the Kurdish population, and also led genocide campaigns known as Al-Anfal Campaigns, which was a series of military actions against Kurdish civil- ians (Black 1993). The regime also used chemical weapons in exterminating the Kurds many different places. The best known chemical attack was in the town of Halabja, where approximately 5,000 civilians were killed in a single day (Human Rights Watch/Middle East 1995). The conflict was also reflected in the attitudes of the public institutions towards the Kurds and their language and culture, which were generally neglected compared to the official Arabic language and the domi- nant Arabic culture. Under these conditions the whole system of education was generally filled with fear and violence. This was also the case in the Hiwa institu- tion, which received education programmes from similar institutions in Baghdad, but the teachers were Kurds from Slemani, and did not have previous experience or training in sign language or deaf education. They had to learn signing in their daily contact with the deaf children, and they also had to develop their own teach- ing methods. Approximately two years after the Iraq-Iran war finished in 1988, Iraq invaded Kuwait and another war started in 1991 against a coalition of international forces that aimed at forcing Iraqi troops out of Kuwait. The Kurds in the north and the Shia Arabs in the south also started uprisings in 1991, and the Iraqi regime retaliat- ed, resulting in mass exodus of the Kurds towards Iran and Turkey. In response to this movement of people, the international coalition established a no-fly zone in the north and in the south in order to protect the Kurds and Shia Arabs from air- strikes by Saddam Hussein’s regime. This paved the way for self-governance of the Kurds in 1992 (Yildiz 2004: 34–50). The United Nations’ security council imposed financial and trade sanctions on Iraq. In this period until the war in 2003 many international non-governmental organisations (NGOs) were active in the Kurdistan region. The aims of the NGOs were to deliver aid to the Kurdish population as well as to the rest of Iraq. The Kurdistan region was separated from the rest of Iraq, and all financial supplies from Baghdad were stopped. As a result, many international NGOs had a particular focus on development in Kurdistan. Unauthenticated Download Date | 5/11/16 3:42 PM 570 Zana Jaza The 1990s were a very difficult period for the Kurdish population, because the infrastructure was ruined due to the successive wars. There was also a huge lack of food and healthcare services. However coming out from the control of the dicta- torship paved the way for different social groups with various political and cultural interests to enjoy a degree of freedom. Unlike earlier, people were able to gather in public and express their opinions without been oppressed. Deaf people also made use of this opportunity and began to shape their own community. In this period many local organisations were established with the support of international NGOs, and thus a deaf organisation was established for the first time ever in Sle- mani. Local organisations also began to support the emergent deaf community within wider programmes of supporting marginalised groups in the society.
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