NEWS CENTER – Finland is known for it’s all woman female-led government, a sign of progress into the women’s right to the west. However, it took a step today towards the Kurdish Revolutionary Struggle, that has the line of Women’s Liberation as it’s main pillar and a long and continued praxis in this line, mostly known to the world as the YPJ fought and defeated ISIS. Today, Finland together with Sweden turned their back to YPG/YPJ that they vowed many times to support in turn to make the turkish state concede their entry on NATO.
Finland’s President Sauli Niinisto said that Turkey has agreed to support Finland and Sweden’s joint membership of NATO, on the first day of the alliance’s summit in the Spanish capital, Madrid. Niinisto said the breakthrough on Tuesday came after the three countries signed a joint memorandum “to extend their full support against threats to each other’s security”.
The organization RiseUp4Rojava present in the country sent a statement on the prohibition of using Kurdish organizations flags during the Helsinki Ilman Natseja (Helsinki Without Nazis) -march of this year:
“In Helsinki, each year, Finnish fascists organize marches and demonstrations on the Independence day of 6.12. Against these marches, the anti-fascist movement organizes the anarchist, communist, feminists, climate activists, apoists and other anti-fascist groups to march the streets in thousands and to block the planned route of the fascists. The apoist movement in Finland has always marched side by side with the Finnish anti-fascist, flying the flags of PKK, YPJ, YPG, PYD, KCK and PJAK. These flags and have, been flown in many demonstrations across Finland both by the Kurdish people and the apoist internationalists.
This year on the he independence day, the Helsinki Police prohibited the flags of the Kurdistan freedom movement in the Helsinki Ilman Natseja (Helsinki Without Nazis) -march. The field police would not give a legal reason for the prohibition. The commanding officer told the marchers the march would not move before the flags are put away and argued that “The police prevents conflicts between groups by interfering with displayed symbols. We take into account[…]that they might provoke other groups on the move”. In essence this means the movement fighting for minority rights had to be hidden away so the neo-nazis could march peacefully.
As we can see the police officially took the side of the fascist over the democratic forces and the anti-fascist. This is hardly the end of the story. The flags have been a part of the same march for years, so why not this year? The fascist demonstrators were not the only fascist the police was trying to please. It’s clear that the decision was based on the ongoing process of Finland joining the NATO, which the Turkish fascist state is stalling at the moment, some of Turkey’s conditions for the affiliation are that Finland employ a more repressive policy towards Kurdish people and the apoist movement, from banning flags to sending people to be tortured in Turkey over connections to the movement, and for Finland especially to allow selling weapons for the Turkish occupying army.
On Erdogans demand along with repressing the movement by forcing the marchers to hide the flags of the movement in Finland, the demands of deportations materialized last week when Sweden deported a Kurdish man
to Turkey, who is now facing seven years in jail for belonging to the PKK. These charges were made on the ground that the man had openly supported a local branch of the HDP while living in Turkey, and attended two democratic demonstrations while in Sweden. The Turkish state-media has already thanked the Swedish state and the Finnish police for conforming with their fascist policy against democracy, and the free life.
In July’s NATO summit in Madrid, Finland and Sweden committed not to support the Kurdish liberation movement. This means that Finland and Sweden have given up their latitude to criticize Turkey for its imperial conquest policies and genocide of the Kurdish people, but now it also seems that these countries are ready to violate the human rights of Kurdish people domestically. We can see how weather it’s the Finnish, Swedish or the Turkish state, the nation-state itself is against the interests of the people and the free democratic society. The nation state will always side with the fascist when it’s in the interest of the state, only citing human rights when it is politically useful for the state. If you are not the correct ethnicity, class, ideology, or gender, the state is ready to silence you, and to trade your life away for it’s own political gain.
We condemn the fascist policies the Finnish and Swedish states are using to make friends with the fascist regime in Turkey, who has again been intensifying the bombing in Rojava for over three weeks. We call for people to stand in solidarity with the Kurdish people in Finland and the international Apoist movement for freedom, equality and grass-roots democracy in the face of state repression.
Fighting fascism from Rojava to Helsinki.”
