On the 3rd of July, three activists, one who is a member of the Kurdish community in Wales and a British Kurdish Solidarity Network member, another BKSN member, and a member of the Anarchist Federation are facing charges of aggravated Trespass (" failing to leave land") for protesting at the Cardiff Arms Fair ( DPRTE) against weapon sales to the dictatorial Turkish state.
Prime minister Theresa May has long championed arms sales to Turkey, but by arming Turkey, the UK government and companies like BAE and Airbus are complicit in human rights abuses, and in the massacre of hundreds of people in Afrin. As reported recently in the Independent, Turkey have hired former ISIS fighters for the invasion of Afrin, War crime allegations against the Turkish military and their hired jihadist mercenaries include the mutilation of corpses of women fighters, the use of chemical gas, and the deliberate targetting of civilians. There are regular reports of kidnapping, rape and torture, abduction, forced religious conversion, and the indiscriminate shooting of refugees.
British weapons bought at Cardiff arms fair are likely to be used not only to suppress the Kurdish struggle for autonomy in Turkey, but also against the US - backed Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) spearheading the fight against Islamic State in Syria. Turkey has used and will continue to use these weapons against the Kurds both within its borders and in Syria.
In Rojava and Northern Syria, people are organising themselves in networks of grassroots assemblies and co-operatives, using the model of Democratic Confederalism, which emphasises direct democracy, feminism and ecology, and a multi-ethnic society without discrimination based on religion, compare this to the Turkish Government, which has been repeatedly criticised by the European Court of Human Rights for the issues raised above, alongside enforced dissapearances and the mass imprisonment of journalists and politicians.
It is important to keep speaking out against the UK government's support for fascist regimes and their attacks on the people of Kurdistan.
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