Kurdish activists in Geneva call on the UN to act for Shengal

Kurdish activists continued a sit-in protest in front of the United Nations Office in Geneva, Switzerland. Today, they called upon the UN to ensure that the future of Shengal is left to the hands of its own people.

Kurdish activists have been staging a sit-in protest in front of the UN Geneva Office since January 25 to demand freedom for Kurdish People's Leader Abdullah Öcalan and to draw attention to the massive hunger strikes by political prisoners in protest at isolation and severe violations of rights in Turkish prisons.

The activists resume their protest in a tent they set up in front of the UN Geneva Office every Wednesday. They have today called upon the United Nations to take action against the agreement reached between Baghdad and KDP for an enforced future for the Yazidi land.

Marking the ‘Heroism Week’, today’s action began with a minute of silence for the martyrs of the Kurdish freedom struggle in the person of Mahsum Korkmaz (Agit), one of the first commanders of the PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party).

Speaking here, Geneva Kurdish Community Center Co-Chair Salih Sağlam pointed out that the agreement that ignores the will of Shengal, the genocidal and occupation attacks directed at four parts of Kurdistan and the isolation imposed on Abdullah Öcalan were not independent from one another.

“In the face of the Kurdish people’s struggle, no genocidal force will ever succeed in their policy to ignore the Kurdish people. We hereby call upon the UN to ensure that the future of Shengal is left to the hands of its own people,” he said.

Bedirhan Kahraman in the name of the Shengal Diaspora Council called on the UN to fulfil its fundamental duty against the threat of invasion and massacre directed at the people of Shengal through an agreement that was reached outside of their will and is null and void.

Following the speeches, a dossier containing the demands of Shengal people for the future of their land was submitted to the ‘Kurdistan Regional Government Desk’ in the United Nations.