Meysam’s father still held onto hope in those days. But today, with the official report confirming the death of a young man named Meysam Mohammadzadeh, known by his organizational name Rojhat Ararat, in the Qandil mountains, the case that began with a father’s painful screams ends with quiet, devastating news. This narrative is a clear picture of the deception, exploitation, and destruction of the young Iranian Kurdish generation caught in the endless wars of armed groups.
Dr. Zana Sadeqi
Meysam Mohammadzadeh was a quiet student from a hardworking family in Maku. At the time, he did not even own a mobile phone, and there was no sign of conflict or intention to run away from home. Yet, one ordinary day, in silence and without a word, he left home and never returned.
His family searched everywhere—police stations, hospitals, even printing his photo in newspapers—but found no trace. It was not until the Iranian Kurdistan Human Rights Watch (IKHRW), in its investigations into the abduction of children by armed groups, managed to find a lead.
Meysam’s father told the Human Rights Watch:
“My son knew absolutely nothing about any political party. If he joined PJAK, someone must have surely deceived him. I swear to God, I don’t know what to do; my financial situation is poor, so I can’t go after him myself. I just beg the organizations that can help to give us the slightest piece of news they have about him.”
Since that day, his parents waited for four long years. No call, no message, no sign—just silence and a deepening sorrow.
On October 28, 2025, the Iranian Kurdistan Human Rights Watch published a report titled: “Nameless Deaths in Qandil: When Kurdish Youth Become Tools of Policy.”
The report stated:
“While the PKK and its Iranian offshoot, PJAK, present themselves as defenders of Kurdish rights, statistics and evidence suggest these groups have led more young Iranian Kurds to their deaths than any enemy; deaths that often occur not in battle, but in internal conflicts and due to the wrong decisions of commanders.”
According to this report, Meysam Mohammadzadeh from Maku, with the organizational name Rojhat Ararat, was killed in the mountainous Khakurke region, on the Iraq-Turkey border. PJAK announced his death after a 14-month delay in August 2024. Neither the cause of death nor the burial site has yet been specified.
Analyses show that PJAK and PKK exploit social voids, poverty, and a sense of injustice in Iranian border regions to recruit adolescents. The promise of “freedom” and “resistance” is, in reality, a tool to provide forces for proxy wars that have no connection to the real aspirations of the Kurdish people.
Commanders of these groups in Qandil often use Iranian Kurds as replacement forces in battles against the Turkish army—battles that bring no benefit to the Kurdish people of Iran. The deaths of these young people are announced only through a propaganda statement, leaving their families in the dark and deep in grief.
The death of Meysam Mohammadzadeh is one of hundreds of examples; adolescents who, instead of school and a future, die in the mountains of Iraq and Turkey, their graves even unknown.
When I first spoke to Meysam’s father, he still had hope his son was alive. Now, that same father has to read about his son’s death in the media. There is no body for burial, and no response from any official body.
This endless cycle—from abduction to death, from silence to oblivion—is not just a family tragedy, but a sign of a deeper crisis: the systematic exploitation of children and adolescents for political purposes.
PJAK and PKK, despite their slogan of “defending Kurds,” have in practice sacrificed more young Iranian Kurds than any other power. The delay in announcing deaths, hiding burial sites, and the propagandistic use of victims’ identities indicate a complete disregard for human dignity.
The case of Meysam Mohammadzadeh must be subject to an independent and international investigation as a clear example of the violation of children’s rights within the framework of non-state armed groups.
Meysam Mohammadzadeh could have been alive today—in school, in university, or beside his family. Instead, he fell victim to a deception that claims a life every day at the border between politics and youthful idealism. His death is a document of the prolonged silence regarding the abduction and exploitation of Kurdish children in endless wars.
As long as there is no grave, no answer, and no truth about these deaths, silence means complicity in the repetition of the catastrophe.
