BERLIN – Last Saturday, November 26, around 3,000 people took part in the annual demonstration organized by the “PKK Ban Lift!” initiative against the since The PKK’s 29-year ban on activities in Germany was demonstrated.
In addition to the umbrella organization of Kurdish associations in Germany KON-MED, the Association of Kurdish Women in Europe (YJK-E), the Interventionist Left (IL), Berlin Migrant Strikers, the Women Life Freedom Collective, the prisoner solidarity Red Aid and the legal aid fund AZADÎ, Various other organizations, the internationalist antifa groups and youth, as well as the revolutionary youth TekoJIN and TCŞ also took part in the demonstration.
For 29 years, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party has been subject to a so-called ban on activities in Germany, which the German government issued on November 26, 1994, exactly one day before the PKK was founded in 1978. The ban was introduced as part of imperialist propaganda against the PKK, which classifies the PKK as a “terrorist organization” justified by the assassination of Olof Palme, the former prime minister of Sweden. However, as later came out officially, the murder of Olof Palme was not a day of the PKK, which Olof Palme considered a friend, but an act of special warfare to denigrate the PKK in Europe.
Despite the false accusations, no apologies have been made to the PKK to date, nor has the existing listing of the PKK in the so-called list of “terrorist organizations” been lifted, nor has the ban on the PKK’s activities in Germany been lifted. The PKK’s ban on activities in Germany has been used as a basis by the German repressive authorities for 29 years to criminalize the political activities of the Kurdish youth and community and to hinder and denigrate their actions in public. For 29 years, the Kurdish community in Germany has been resisting and unmasking this existing ban as an expression of the fascist German-Turkish friendship in the massacre policy against Kurdistan and the Kurdish population.
Last Saturday, almost 3,000 people, mostly internationalists, took a stand against this policy of repression and persecution, who see the PKK and its fight for freedom as hope for a liberated life without capitalism, the state, power and violence.
The following impressions were captured on video during the demonstration in Berlin:
