Last weekend, Kurdish organizations held events throughout Germany to celebrate Newroz. In several cities there were police attacks. The Kurdish umbrella organization KON-MED (Confederation of Communities from Kurdistan in Germany) released a statement on the violent police crackdown on gatherings, saying the following:

"With our member federations FCK, FED-KURD, FED-DEM, FED-MED and FCDK-KAWA, together with many other Kurdish and solidarity organizations and associations, we held demonstrations and rallies in many German cities on March 20, 2021, in connection with the campaign 'End isolation, fascism and oppression - Time for freedom!' Thousands of people participated in these events. We would like to thank all organizers and participants for taking to the streets with us and raising their voices against fascism, dictatorship and injustice.

Unfortunately, however, we had to realize once again that the German state and its security forces are not well-disposed towards our protest for freedom and peace. Once again, the regulatory authorities imposed the most absurd conditions on us and banned many of our symbols. While the police in Kassel acted as if they could not enforce the ban on demonstrations for "lateral thinkers" and hardly punished their mass violations of the infection control measures, they were able to break up Kurdish demonstrations for the Newroz festival in Düsseldorf and Berlin with reference to the high number of participants and infection control. In Hanover, the uniformed individual cases were not satisfied with their own catalog of requirements, which is why they then arbitrarily issued new bans and requirements during the demonstration and on the rally square.Demonstrators were violently pulled out of the crowd, thrown to the ground and dragged across the asphalt. There were injured. The officials deliberately created a threatening scenario in order to incite the crowd and bring unrest into the peacefully celebrating crowd.

Against the background that even in Turkey Kurds were able to celebrate the Newroz festival in hundreds of thousands everywhere in the country despite the state of emergency and political persecution, it is more than telling that such a protest is not possible in the Federal Republic without state-ordered police repression. This arbitrary and aggressive attitude of the police is not at all different from that of the fascist AKP/MHP state. Just as if the law enforcement authorities of the Federal Government had received instructions from Turkish state authorities, they attacked demonstrators and robbed them of their rights to political participation, physical integrity and expression of opinion.

We do not want to and cannot put up with this kind of treatment of our society living in the diaspora and the people showing solidarity with it. We will continue to defend ourselves politically and legally against this policy of repression and criminalization. We will not allow ourselves to be robbed of our rights under the guise of protection against infection. The German state must end its cooperation with the Erdogan regime. Resistance means life!"