Mark Campbell
The Kurdish Community Centre (KCC) in north London was raided in the early hours of Wednesday 27 November, exactly one week ago. At the same time, hundreds of anti-terrorist police, many armed, stormed into the houses of six members of the Kurdish community in London breaking down doors and causing trauma for those detained and their families.
These unprecedented events that resembled raids carried out against Kurds in Turkey, took place at exactly the same time as Turkish-sponsored armed Jihadist gangs, including Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), formerly Al-Qaeda, a proscribed terrorist organisation by the US and UK in northern Syria, launched major lightning offensives against Aleppo (Heleb) and Kurdish areas in northern Syria.
Turkish nationalist leader and key government ally of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Devlet Bahçeli yesterday declaring that Aleppo “is Turkish and Muslim to its very marrow. It is not just us who says so, history says so, geography says so. The Turkish flag that was hoisted over Aleppo citadel says so.” Armenians who escaped the 1915 genocide and settled in Aleppo are very nervous.
Tens of thousands of Kurds, formerly displaced by Turkey from Afrin and living in refugee camps, have again now been forced to flee as many reports of the Islamic State (ISIS) style human rights abuses by HTS have been reported. Tens of thousands of Kurds in the Kurdish neighbourhoods of Aleppo, Sheikh Maqsoud and Ashrafieh, are preparing also to flee to the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES) east of the Euphrates river.
As six of my Kurdish friends are still being held after one week being questioned in Hammersmith police station facing very serious charges and access to the Kurdish Community Centre is still being denied by the Metropolitan police, I would urgently like to ask the Prime Minister, Home Secretary and Foreign Secretary a very direct question.
Whether these heavy handed and disproportionate raids against both the Kurdish Community Centre and my friends were coordinated with the Turkish regime as part of this Labour government’s new ‘pragmatic’ foreign policy?
If so, I demand that all my friends are released, the Kurdish Community Centre is reopened and an independent investigation is carried out into the police’s tactics and the misuse of counter-terrorism laws as this is essential to ensure accountability, transparency, and the prevention of future abuses of power.
Additionally, the Metropolitan Police and local authorities must issue a public apology for the harm caused, accompanied by a commitment to rebuilding trust with the Kurdish community, which I fear has been irrevocably damaged.
