Stêrk TV announced that presenter Şêrko Celal, 65, passed away on Saturday in a hospital in the northern French city of Lille where he was fighting Covid-19.

Şêrko Celal, who was also known as Şêrko Celal Mameş Koyê and made a name for himself as a painter, was born in 1956 in the southern Kurdish city of Koye. After primary school, is family moved to Hewlêr (Erbil), where he successfully completed high school. Şêrko Celal then went to Baghdad.

But when the Barzani revolution broke out against the Iraqi Baath regime of Saddam Hussein in the spring of 1974, he and his brother Rehbar Celal moved to the mountains as peshmerga. In 1982, when the revolution had already been crushed, Şêrko Celal left his homeland and went into exile in France. There he received political asylum.

Şêrko Celal has worked for the Kurdish press since 2002. At that time, he started at Medya-TV. The tv station was banned two years later and was followed by Roj TV, where Celal presented the program "Tîşkî Huner", an art and culture program prepared by Şêrko Celal himself. After the ban of Roj TV, Stêrk TV appeared on the scene. Celal's program was named "Rêjney Reng".

Şêrko Celal also dealt intensively with Kurdish literature and wrote his own texts, columns and poems. He has been buried next to his wife, who died a few years ago after a long illness.