On Sunday 18 September, at Parco Schuster, in Ostiense neighbourhood of Rome, several Italian artists and a Kurdish music group will play for free in support of the history, culture and politics of the Kurdish people.

The festival called A Time for Hope is dedicated to the Kurdish people.

Beginning at 18.00pm in the evening, Daniele Silvestri, Fiorella Mannoia, Elio Germano, Giacomo Bevilacqua and Michele Zerocalcare (+ special guest), Pierpaolo Capovilla and the Cattivi Maestri, Hani Mojtahedy & the Moon, Punkreas, The Andre, Anna Favella will perform and take turns on the stage.

A day of celebration of Kurdish culture and music that will also denounce the injustices, carried out by nation states as well as ultra-religious organisations, against the Kurdish populations living between Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria reports La Repubblica.

“Since at least the end of the First World War, the Kurdish people have suffered with repression born of nationalism and racism,’ says Paolo Noise, guitarist of Punkreas. ‘We have always been in solidarity with the Kurdish people’s struggle for liberation, which in Rojava has also become a political experiment as well as a vanguard of resistance against ISIS.”

For Fiorella Mannoia, “The purpose of this evening is to draw attention to the fate of a courageous people, it is a story of diaspora and repression, in recent years armed and used by world powers to fight the advance of ISIS, which threatened our security, and they have done so, brave men and women fighters have prevented its advance, they were promised help but in the end find themselves betrayed again. A people desperately seeking recognition for their land, their language, their culture, their right to live according to their model of society. We will all stand together to demand that Ocalan and the other PKK prisoners be released after more than 20 years of imprisonment, and that a dialogue for peace be opened in an area that has been on fire for too long. To stand by the Kurdish people is a duty. Like all peoples who are robbed of the dignity to live in peace at home’.

Italian cartoonist Zerocalcare adds “The PKK, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party is included, under pressure from Turkey, and the placid goodwill of many allies, on the lists of international terrorism despite the historical political change of the Kurdish people’s liberation movement and the various attempts, made by Ocalan himself from prison. Remove the PKK from the lists of international terrorism, free Ocalan and open a table of peace and dialogue in the name of democratic confederalism with the governments of Iran, Iraq, Turkey and Syria is a necessity not only for the right of the Kurdish people to exist but to find a peaceful solution in a complex and inter-ethnic area like the Middle East.”

The music festival, A Time for Hope begins at 18.00pm on Sunday 18 September, at Parco Schuster, in Ostiense neighbourhood of Rome.