Signature campaign to delist the PKK in Kiel

Kurdish activists and their friends continue their individual and collective efforts as part of the worldwide campaign for the removal of the PKK from the list of terrorist organizations.

Signatures are being collected worldwide for the international campaign to remove the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) from the list of terrorist organizations. The campaign for the delisting of the Kurdish liberation movement was launched last November by the international initiative Justice for Kurds and is directed at the Council of the European Union. The goal is four million signatures for the removal of the PKK from the "terror list."

Among the first signatories of the petition are over a thousand personalities from thirty different countries, including Austrian writer Elfriede Jelinek, the Afghan women's rights activist Selay Ghaffar, Hamburg-based international law expert Norman Paech, and Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek. The initiators argue that the classification of the PKK as terrorist prevents a political solution to the Kurdish question. The campaign petition can also be signed online.

Kurdish activists opened a stand at the Europa Platz in Kiel, Germany on Wednesday and collected signatures for the international campaign. “Stop Turkey’s war in Kurdistan, Against Turkey’s Attacks – For Closure of Airspace over Rojava”, read the banner unfurled at the stand.

The activists also handed out leaflets promoting the physical freedom of Kurdish leader Abdullah Öcalan, who has been held in aggravated isolation in Imrali High Security Prison on the Imrali Island in the Sea of Marmara since his abduction from Kenya to Turkey in an international conspiracy in 1999.