|
The breaking of the Kurdish boy's arm in
Turkey dose not break his Kurdish spirit
17.4.2008
By Sertip Zangana
|
|
|
|
April
17, 2008
Guns, sticks and tanks – Turkey’s welcome of the
Kurdish Newroz New Year celebrations TURKEY’S SECRET
POLICE BREAKING THE ARM OF A 14 YEAR OLD KURDISH BOY
DURING NEWROZ CELEBRATIONS IN TURKEY, 2008. During
the 2008 ‘Newroz’ festivities in Turkey, Kurdish
mothers and their children came out of their homes
wearing their colorful Kurdish dresses to start the
5 thousand year old Newroz celebrations in their
small towns and villages. ‘New-roz’, meaning
‘New-day’ is the traditional new day of the spring
celebrated on the 21st of March every year in
cities, towns and villages spanning from the
Mediterranean, Black and Caspian Seas,www.ekurd.net
through the Persian
Gulf, Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Pakistan, parts of
North India, Russia and North West China to mention
but a few parts of the world. On this day of yearly
celebration throughout today’s war torn regions of
the world, Kurds, Persians, Baluchis, Pashtuns,
Afghans, Azerbaijanis, Parsis and ethnic groups in
India, Russia and China come together to celebrate
their unified cultural heritage with traditional
music, stories and dance.
In every European city, millions of people many whom
have dispersed and escaped from gross human rights
violations in their countries of origin come
together to unite in their joy and jubilation. And
yet, Turkey, unlike any other nation, sends hundreds
of thousands of its military and police officers
with guns, sticks and tanks to violently silence the
music and dance of the Kurds on this day. During the
latest Newroz festivities in 2008, mobile phone
images captured by Kurds and circulated throughout
the world with the help of the internet showed
Kurdish towns in Turkey quickly turning from centers
of celebration to targets of a violent show of
oppression by the Turkish state. Turkey’s soldiers
were heard chanting ‘Happy are those who are
Turkish’, largely interpreted as an anti-Kurdish
sentiment amongst Turkey’s Kurds who form the
largest number of Kurds anywhere in the world today.
The most recent images showed Kurdish women beaten
to unconsciousness by armed soldiers and police in
Turkish uniforms in clear site of the world media
and children as young as 14 were isolated and
tortured.
KURDISH WOMEN BEATEN TO THE FLOOR WITH STICKS BY
TURKEY’S POLICE FORCE
In one video, one of Turkey’s secret police officers
is seen breaking the arm of a 14 year old Kurdish
boy without any show of emotion. The precision and
skill with which his arm was broken demonstrated the
long history of the Turkish state’s disgust towards
all things Kurdish.
The boys’ broken arm was clearly causing him
excruciating pain but previously similar acts by the
Turkish state against Kurdish children have not
broken their Kurdish spirit. In the same video
images, an elderly Kurdish man tried to escape from
the soldiers but received a heavy blow to his head
from a soldier young enough to be his grand child.
He immediately fell unconscious to the floor.
KURDISH ELDER GRABBED BY THE NECK AND EVENTUALLY
PUNCHED INTO THE GROUND, THE LAST IMAGES ARE NOT
SHOWN OUT OF RESPECT FOR HIS FAMILY AND COMMUNITY
A young Kurdish woman was filmed lying on the floor,
slowly falling asleep with the knife, stained with
blood, still lying next to her.
YOUNG KURDISH WOMAN STABBED TO DEATH
KURDISH CHILD BEATEN TO UNCONSCIOUSNESS BY ONE OF
TURKEY’S POLICE GANGS
Turkey, whose aim has been to join the European
Union, has repetitively been demonstrated in failing
to comply with the basic principles of Human Rights
as practiced in European nations such as Holland and
Germany, where hundreds of thousands of Kurds have
been able to find safety and comfort.
Today many Turkish an Kurdish intellectuals believe
that Turkey is at an important cross road and as
recently as 2005, the Nobel prize winning Turkish
writer Ferit Orhan Pamuk,www.ekurd.net
was arrested and sent to
a Turkish court for making a statement in a Swiss
interview regarding the mass killings of Armenians
and Kurds in Turkey. In the interview Pamuk said
‘thirty thousand Kurds and a million Armenians were
killed in these lands [Turkey] and no one dares talk
about it’.
The Turkish court finally dropped the charges
against Pamuk in 2006 following immense
international pressure including a delegation of
MEPs led by Carmiel Eurlings to observe his trial.
More recently, The Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK),
outlawed by Turkey as Terrorist Organization
successfully appealed this long held label in
Europe’s second highest Court.
The Luxembourg-based European Court of First
Instance overruled a 2002 decision of the Council of
the EU that put the PKK on the EU list of terrorist
organizations. The EU court said that the decision
to place the PKK on the terrorist list, in the way
it was justified, contravened EU legislation.
With this in mind and the continued oppression of
Kurds in Turkey, there is a new hope for the World’s
30-50 million Kurds to one day benefit from the same
human rights laws that the civilized world has
already put into practice.
By Sertip Zangana, London UK. You may reach the
author via email at: sertip_zangana (at) yahoo.com
Copyright, respective author or news agency.
** Kurds are not recognized as an official minority
in Turkey and are denied rights granted to other
minority groups. Under EU pressure, Turkey recently
granted Kurds limited rights for broadcasts and
education in the Kurdish language, but critics say
the measures do not go far enough.
The use of the term "Kurdistan" is vigorously
rejected due to its alleged political implications
by the Republic of Turkey, which does not recognize
the existence of a "Turkish Kurdistan" Southeast
Turkey.
Others estimate over 40 million Kurds live in Big
Kurdistan (Iraq, Turkey, Syria, Iran, Armenia),
which covers an area as big as France, about half of
all Kurds which estimate to 20 million live in
Turkey.
Turkey is home to 25 million ethnic Kurds, a
large Turkey's Kurdish community openly sympathise
with the Kurdish PKK for a Kurdish homeland in the
country's mainly Kurdish southeast of Turkey.
Before August 2002, the Turkish government placed
severe restrictions on the use of Kurdish language,
prohibiting the language in education and broadcast
media. The Kurdish alphabet is still not recognized
in Turkey, and use of the Kurdish letters X, W, Q
which do not exist in the Turkish alphabet has led
to judicial persecution in 2000 and 2003
The Kurdish flag flown officially in Iraqi Kurdistan
but unofficially flown by Kurds in Armenia. The flag
is banned in Iran, Syria, and Turkey where flying it
is a criminal offence"
Southeastern Turkey:
North Kurdistan (
Kurdistan-Turkey)
wikipedia
Top |
Kurd Net
does not take credit for and is not responsible for the content of news
information on this page
|
® 