Kurdish people rally against intimidation

September 1, 2011
Issue 

About 100 people rallied in Melbourne on September 1 in defence of the Kurdish Association of Victoria after a series of violent attacks.

The Kurdish community has received numerous death threats. There have been many attempts to set the association's building on fire, ending on April 14 this year when the building was burnt down by arsonists and rendered non-functional.

Just a few weeks ago, eight bullets were fired at the remains of the building. Fortunately, no one was inside at the time.

The Turkish state, since its foundation in 1923, has denied the existence of the 20 million Kurdish people living in Turkey. Manifestations of Kurdish identity and culture is brutally suppressed through Turkey's security agencies, military apparatus and state controlled courts.

There have been more than 4,000 state sanctioned, extra-judicial killings in Turkey, with the majority of the victims being Kurdish.



There are more than 3000 Kurdish politicians and thousands of Kurdish children in Turkish jails, many of them without charge or with sentences that defy common understandings of justice.

In a September 1 statement, the association said: “Oppression of the Kurdish people, coupled with extra judicial arrests, imprisonments, torture, killings and denial of basic human rights has forced many Kurds to seek refuge in Western countries, including Australia."

“For many years now, the Kurdish community in Victoria has been subject to harassment, intimidation and acts of terror culminating in a sense of fear in the general community from acts believed to be perpetrated by the ultra-nationalists who are bent on extending the Turkish state’s policy of annihilation, oppression fear and intimidation to Australia’s shores.”

[For further information contact Mirza on 0409 644 004.]

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