Kurdish Media
Sept 23 2004

Remembering Musa Anter

23/09/2004 KurdishMedia.com
London (KurdishMedia.com) 23 September 2004: Musa Anter, known to
millions of Kurds as Apê (Uncle) Musa, was born around 1918 in the
village of Zivinge in Nusaybin.

He never knew his true year of birth. He was first registered as born
in 1924, and his year of birth was later legally changed to 1920.
However, told by his mother that he was born right after the Armenian
Genocide, he believed he was born in either 1917 or 1918.

His family, like many in this area, had relatives in the Turkish and
Syrian-occupied segments of Kurdistan.

In his simple village, where the only drinking water available was
that collected from the rain, Apê Musa grew up hearing oral accounts
of various events in Kurdish history, tales of persecution and
bravery.

Apê Musa became an activist writer, fighting for justice for his
people peacefully using the written word. He was one of the most
prominent journalists of the pro-Kurdish newspaper Ozgur Gundem and
Chairman of the Mesopotamian Cultural Center in Istanbul, and was
widely regarded as one of the most knowledgeable men in the nation on
Kurdish culture.

On September 20, 1992, Apê Musa was the fifth member of the Ozgur
Gundem staff to be assassinated, murdered by a Turkish death squad in
the city of Amed (Diyarbakir).

Lured from a hotel room by a telephone call and then shot four times
by an assassin pretending to be a taxi cab driver, Apê Musa became a
martyr in the embattled capital of Kurdistan, where he was visiting
to sign books for a cultural festival.

Twelve years later, as Kurds in all parts of Kurdistan continue to
fight for the simple right to live as Kurds, Apê Musa’s memory lives
on.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress