A series of activities were held for the 200th birthday of Karl Marx last Saturday in Kassel, Germany. Die Linke had a stand in Karl Marx Square, where the activities were held, and put up YPG/YPJ flags to draw attention to the resitance against the Turkish state in Afrin.

After a while, the police went to the stand and said the flags are “banned material”, and wanted to take them down. Die Linke Hessen State MP Marjana Schott, responsible for the stand, told the police that they would not take the flags down, after which the police forcibly took the flags down and confiscated them.

It has since come to light that the Kassel state prosecutor launched an investigation on state MP Schott. The Die Linke MP protested the approaches by the police and the prosecutor’s office and said: “YPG and YPJ are legal organizations in Germany. They are not illegal. We owe the defeat of ISIS in Syria to these two Kurdish organizations.”

“WE PUT THE FLAGS UP ONLY FOR SOLIDARITY”

German MP Marjana Schott pointed out that an investigation can be launched only if the YPG/YPJ flags are used for PKK propaganda and said: “But in our activity, there was no PKK propaganda whatsoever, and we only put up the flags in question for solidarity with the struggle the Kurds have waged.”

On March 2, 2017 the Ministry of Interior Affairs sent a notice with the title “Update to the PKK ban” to states and announced that many Kurdish symbols including YPG, YPJ and PYD flags had been banned.

But in responses to written inquiries, the federal government stated that the symbols in question only constitute a “crime” if Kurds use them as backup symbols for PKK, and the YPG and YPJ are not banned themselves. This statement led to interpretations that German people could carry the flags. In recent months, YPG/YPJ flags had been carried in several events with the strong support offered the Afrin resistance.