Kerry Smith
The Refugee Council of Australia, which represents more than 100 organisations and individuals working with and for refugees in Australia and around the world, has questioned the Howard government's listing of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) as a terrorist organisation.
In a media statement issued on February 3, Refugee Council president John Gibson said the government's decision will "impact adversely on offshore humanitarian applicants who have only distant links with the PKK such as elderly parents but who may have discreetly assisted their children's political actions.
"There is, in the council's view, a serious risk that thorough individual assessments in future cases will be replaced by a blanket refusal of claims invoking the proscription provisions together with the character provisions of the Migration Act for any Kurdish asylum seeker with actual or imputed links to the PKK.
"In these circumstances, the council urges the government to re-think its decision and the parliamentary joint standing committee on intelligence and security which is meeting soon to recommend that it be overturned."
The government proscribed the PKK on December 15 under its anti-terrorism legislation. The PKK, a left-wing party founded in 1978 in south-eastern Turkey, seeks the establishment of an independent Kurdish state in the Middle East, uniting the 30 million Kurds in Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran.
In the 1980s and '90s, the PKK organised armed resistance in eastern Turkey to the Ankara government's brutal suppression of the Kurds. However, at a PKK congress in January 2000, members voted that the party would henceforth use only non-violent political means to achieve its new public goal of improved rights for Kurds in Turkey.
From Green Left Weekly, February 15, 2006.
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