Kurdish community heavily harassed in France

france / belgium / luxemburg | repression / prisoners | non-anarchist press Wednesday December 08, 2010 16:44 by Rojhelat

MARSEILLES, -- French authorities have heavily harassed the Kurdish community in this country. Kurdish community workers and human rights activist are arrested under the label of working for “illegal” organisations.

Six Kurds have been arrested early this morning in the French city of Marseilles. The arrest order was issued by an anti-terrorist judge in Paris.

According to the first reports the police has said that among the six arrested is "a leading PKK figure at European level", a phrase often used by European police usually turning out to be as vague as the sentence itself.

The Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) which is the only Kurdish political organisation in Turkey resisting the Turkish oppression of the Kurds was put into the European terror list in May 2002, while the PKK ended its armed conflict with Turkey in 1999.

Blacklisting of the PKK by the EU blocked the way toward peaceful settlement to the Kurdish issue. It created a justification for further oppression of Kurdish people and has spurred Turkey to commit more violence against the Kurds who are regarded as “terrorists”.
Almost 3000 Kurdish children aged from 7 and 8, are imprisoned in Turkey under the charge of “terrorism”. More than 1500 Kurdish politicians, who have been democratically elected, are put into jail and charged with “terrorism”. These are all the consequence of blacklisting of the Kurdish resistance movement.

The European Association of Lawyers for Democracy and Human Rights ELDH and the Association for Democracy and International Law MAF-DAD have demanded that the PKK should be taken off from Terror List.

The European Union court ruled against the way the PKK was blacklisted. The Court of First Instance (CFI), and the EU's second-highest court, has also said the EU had not justified its decision at the time. The Luxembourg-based Court of First Instance said that a decision made by EU governments in 2002 was illegal under EU law and the EU nations are obliged to implement the EU court rulings. Europe's human rights watchdog, has said the EU's anti-terror rules violate democratic principles.