The "Kampa Govendê" of the Mesopotamian Culture and Art Movement (TEV-ÇAND) came to an end in North Rhine-Westphalia on Saturday. 115 participants, including teachers and students, spent a week exploring various forms of Kurdish culture and art. One focus was on govend, the traditional round dance from Kurdistan, which has different characteristics in the various regions. Around one hundred different dance steps from the regions of Viranşehir, Varto, Diyarbakır, Botan, Koçgiri, Urfa, Ağrı and Hakkari were practised in the seminar. Other seminars focused on music, rhythm and the scientific foundations of art.

There are fifty Govend groups of the TEV-ÇAND cultural movement in Europe with around 800 members. The Kampa Govendê has been held once a year since 1997. The first camp was dedicated to the memory of the actress and dancer Sarya (Nursen Ince), who died in the Kurdish liberation struggle in 1997. This year, the event was held in memory of the internationalist Michael Panser (Bager Nûjiyan). The internationalist from Germany lost his life in a Turkish airstrike in the guerrilla-held Medya Defence Zones in southern Kurdistan (northern Iraq) on 14 December 2018.