A Germany-based organisation is holding a sports event on Saturday to raise money for medical supplies and awareness-raising activities for a Kurdish refugee camp in Iraqi Kurdistan.
Thirty-Six Fights has been organising martial arts events along with information exchange activities since 2019 to alleviate human suffering in Kurdish-populated territories in north Iraq and north Syria.
In 2019, the organisation’s project aimed for international solidarity with the Kurdish territory of Rojava, whose people were at the forefront in the fight that ended with the liberation of northeast Syria from the Islamic State (ISIS) in 2016. Thirty-Six Fights raised funds for a prosthesis workshop in Qamishli city for Kurdish fighters and residents who still suffer the consequences of war, but now also face Turkish aggression as Ankara sees an autonomous Kurdish territory near its border as a threat to its national security.
Makhmour refugee camp in north Iraq, which is home to more than 12,000 displaced Kurds, most of whom fled Turkey in the mid-1990s at the height of clashes between Turkish military and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), has also been another constant target of Ankara’s military operations.
In its 2022 martial arts competition event in Berlin on 10 September, the organisation aims to raise funds to provide medical supplies to people living in the camp, which has been under an embargo imposed by the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) in 2019, after a Turkish intelligence agent was killed in the Iraqi Kurdistan region’s capital of Erbil.
The representatives of the Civaka Azad, Kurdish Centre of Public Opinion Centre in Berlin, as well as the Association for Justice, Peace and Hope in Kurdistan and the Disarm Rheinmetall Initiative will also be present at the event on Saturday.