Lift the Ban on the Kurdish Workers Party - The PKK

VISIT : http://delistthepkk.com/

Memed Aksoy writing on KurdishQuestion.com, 2 September 2014. ‘Why the PKK needs to be taken off the terror list’.

The PKK’s listing as a proscribed organisation around the world endangers a potential solution and peace. This became evident when in 2012 three PKK militants were murdered in Paris in what was certainly a provocation to stall peace talks. The assailant was an agent of the Turkish Intelligence Agency who had links to other intelligence groups. Delisting the PKK would ease the discussions between the PKK and Turkish state and also mean that the EU and USA could play their role in bringing a lasting and just solution.

Fr. Matthew Esau LLM, Kurdish Human Rights Action Group (KHRAG) Newroz Message 2012:

The last outstanding matter in the Middle East is the Kurdish question in Turkey. We call on the EU and the US to play a more animated role in resolving this problem. The EU and the US should also remove the PKK from the Terrorist List. The PKK is not a terrorist organisation, it is a liberation movement and keeping the PKK on terrorist list makes it possible for Turkey to accuse and jail thousands of people in Turkey.

Sebahat Tuncel, Vice Co-chairperson and Istanbul Deputy of the Democratic Society Party (DTP), writing in Jadaliyya, 13 May 2013:

For Turkey to manage this process by itself, for there to be no yielding to internal factions who oppose a democratic peaceful resolution, international powers also have a part to play in terms of duties and responsibilities, especially the United States and the European Union. It would be a contribution to the process of peaceful resolution in Turkey if the United States and members of the European Union were to review their “terrorist organizations” list and remove from it the PKK, which has taken strategic steps to transition from armed struggle to democratic struggle in response to the call by the Kurdish people’s leader Abdullah Öcalan.

David Phillips, Director of the Program on Peace-building and Rights at the Institute for the Study of Human Rights, writing inHuffington Post, 21 May 2013:

Delisting the PKK would open the door to discussions with the Democratic Union Party (PYD), the PKK’s affiliate in Syria, about joining the opposition to Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad. It would also boost the peace process in Turkey by rewarding the PKK for its recent decision to cease hostilities and withdraw fighters from Turkish soil, maintaining momentum and setting the stage for negotiations aimed at a full final solution to Turkey’s Kurdish question [...]The United States has delisted FTOs before to incentivize peace. Other groups removed from the list during a peace process include the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO). Groups have also been delisted when circumstances change. Even the Mujahedin Khalq, which was responsible for hostage-taking at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, was recently delisted.

Ahmet Turk, mayor of Mardin and former chair of the DTP speaking with news outlet Rudaw on 23 May 2013:

In my view, keeping the Kurds on the “terrorist list” will only encourage those who do not want a solution, and serve solely their interest. It is a must that this attitude toward the Kurds should change, and the PKK should be de-listed. What will those, who labeled Kurds as “terrorists”, say about this in the future? How will they defend their incorrect decision? This will certainly not remain as it is, and the international community will discuss this issue. Everybody will see clearly who wants this issue to be solved, and who wants the opposite. Kurds do not have any concern about this issue because they trust themselves. It is time for world to see that Kurds are not an obstacle to peace. We know this very well, and achieving true peace will make us very happy. But, it is equally important to expose the true face of those who do not want peace!

Selahattin Demirtas, co-chair of the Peace and Democracy Party (BDP), quoted in ANF in November 2013:

The EU should definitively review its list of ‘terrorist organisations’ because of the fact that it provides no contribution but constitutes an obstacle to the peace process in Turkey to keep an armed organization which guarantees disarmament in the list of terrorist organisations.

Dr Vicki Sentas, lecturer in Law at UNSW Australia writing in The Conversation on 13 May 2014:

What does this look like when the support base for an armed conflict demands recognition of minority cultures and languages, accountability for state crimes and an end to conflict? Let’s take the example of how the Kurdish struggle for self-determination in Turkey has been transformed into “terrorism”.

The Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) is listed by Britain as a terrorist organisation, yet the PKK is currently engaged in fragile negotiations for peace with Turkey. Meanwhile, listing of the PKK as terrorist by the international community has given Turkey the confidence and legitimacy to embark on a mass criminalisation of Kurdish civil society. Between 2009 and the start of 2013, almost 40,000 people were prosecuted for “membership of a terrorist organisation” in Turkey, according to government statistics [...]

Proscription creates an international regime in which some states are empowered to use more repressive tactics against movements for self-determination. The British state, among other states who ban armed conflicts, deserves sustained attention for its role in depoliticising self-determination movements and legitimising and therefore extending state violence elsewhere.

Michael M. Gunter, professor of Political Science at Tennessee Technological University and Secretary General of the EU Turkey Civic Commission, in a piece published in Peace in Kurdistan Campaign on 25 July 2014:

 However, the situation is worse because the United States continues to list the PKK as a terrorist movement. This unfortunate designation hinders the on-going Turkish-PKK peace process. The United States continues to so list the PKK out of deference to its NATO ally Turkey, but since Turkey is negotiating with the PKK the terrorist appellation is no longer appropriate and even hinders the negotiations. If the United States delisted the PKK, Turkey and the European Union (EU) would probably follow suit and the peace process benefit. Instead the United States even continues to denounce falsely such PKK negotiators as Sabri Ok, Remzi Kartal, and Adem Uzun, among others, as drug kingpins.

Neither King nor Kaiser by David Rovics

SEE ALSO: http://greatunrest2012.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/shot-at-dawn-15-welshmen-executed.html

Dancing in Kobane - Katyuska : 6th December - Kobane Day

What do British Nationalists and French Nationalists have in Common with Spanish Nationalists - Fascist Pasts and Fascists Present

Spanish Nazis burn the Catalonian Flag on Referendum Day 
on Catalonia has 2 million people vote in referendum.

The Nationalism of the oppressor means Fascism

The Nationalism of the Oppressed means 

National Liberation and Socialism 

SEE ALSO: 

BRITISH NATIONALISM

http://greatunrest2012.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/dismembering-traitor-class-british.html

FRENCH NATIONALISM

http://www.frontnational.com/

SPANISH NATIONALISM

http://falange.es/contenido/

The Struggle for Freedom for Catalonia

Partisans of Great Unrest salute Kurdish Struggle in Kobane

APPEAL FROM YR AFLONYDDWCH MAWR 

 We Call for  Sanctuary in Wales to Kurdish Refugees stuck on th Turkish Border over Winter will be fatal to Children. 

Plus request Aid is sent to the Refugees in the Camps immediately.

Shot at Dawn : The 15 Welshmen executed during the First World War by their own side by Rachel Misstear

                                                                           William Jones is on Left of Picture

Yr  Aflonyddwch  Mawr says its is time to  have a monument in Wales to those who heroically resisted the First World War on the Western Front as well as at Home.

We are aware of mutinies in three Welsh Regiments on the Western Front  which have been edited out of regimental histories.

The executed and dead will have their say and will not remain excluded from history for  ever.

Private William Jones was probably suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) induced by the horrors of the Great War.

But after deserting the young solider turned himself in – and later found himself blindfolded and put before a firing squad.

The young solider from the Vale of Neath was one of 306 young British soldiers – 15 of them serving in Welsh ranks – who received the ultimate punishment for military offences such as desertion, cowardice, falling asleep or striking an officer.

They were all shot at dawn.

In 2006 a blanket pardon was issued for the men who died this way following a petition in the years after the First World War.

Now a new book by Neath author Robert King, who campaigned and supported the petition, portrays the brutality faced by the 15 Welshmen who all faced this terrifying end.

Shot at Dawn looks at how during the First World War the concept of ‘shell shock’ – now known as PTSD – was not known and was not accepted as an excuse for desertion or any of the other offences which resulted in men being shot..

Pte Jones’ name has since been inscribed on Glynneath war memorial nearly 90 years after he was executed.

Suspected to have been too young to join the army, Mr King thinks Pte Jones was one of the many hundreds of volunteers who lied about their age and signed up by a desperate army.

“Private William Jones, 9th Battalion Royal Welsh Fusiliers, was a Kitchener volunteer who hailed from Glynneath,” said Mr King.

“Jones was a stretcher bearer in France who went missing on June 15, 1917, after taking a wounded soldier to the dressing station.

“The job of a stretcher bearer entailed going out into no-man’s-land collecting wounded and dead soldiers and their body parts and returning them to the dressing station.

“It was a horrendous duty for such a young man and it could have unhinged him, causing him to desert.”

During the early days of September 1917, having been away from his battalion for about three months, he handed himself in to Neath Police Station – possibly encouraged by his family – and the officers there promptly sent him to the assistant provost marshal in Bristol.

“If he had not made the decision to surrender it is probable that he would have been undetected for the duration of the war,” said Mr King.

Pte Jones was executed a month later. In a foreword to the book Neath MP Peter Hain said the men who died had been victims of war rather than failures at war.

Mr Hain supported a proposal in the House of Commons to grant a blanket pardon to the men.

“The terrible injustice suffered by 306 British men executed under the Army Act has been like a deep festering sore,” he said.

“Their ‘offence’ was quite likely to be suffering from shell shock – now called post-traumatic stress syndrome. Through no fault of their own they downed arms and could not serve, so breaching the regulations stipulated by the Army Act.”

In the years following the First World War the executed soldiers’ cause was raised with great passion in the House with Labour MP Ernest Thurtle being one of the first to do so in the early 1920s.

He argued that the executed soldiers should be laid to rest in graves alongside those men who fell in action after responding to a petition submitted by a soldier who felt that they should be honoured in the same way.

Mr King, a local history author from Neath, has been campaigning since the 1970s to have the soldiers pardoned and placed on memorials to those who died in the First World War.

“My attention focused on those Welshmen who had been regulars, volunteers or conscripts and then faced a firing squad for committing one of the variety of offences either through, in some cases, alcoholic inebriation or shell shock (now called post-traumatic stress syndrome).”

Mr King said soldiers who made up the firing line were also mentally scarred by the dawn shootings.

“It must have been horrendous to be instructed to carry out this duty – in some cases the members of the firing party would have known the condemned. To be involved in a firing party would often leave a mark on a man who had knowingly shot someone who had been fighting on the Allied side.”

Four of the 15 Welshmen executed by the British Army had been convicted of murder and were not subject to the blanket pardon that was granted for other offences.

However the court martials they faced were nothing like a civilian murder trial and did not take into account any of the mitigating circumstances surrounding the killings.

Corporal George Povey, from Flintshire, became the first Welshman to be executed and the first soldier to face the firing squad for the offence of leaving his post. He was just 23.

He was executed at Saint-Jans-Cappel in France on February 11, 1915. His immediate grave was lost during the confusion of the war and his name is commemorated on the Menin Gate.

Private Major Penn and Private Albert Troughton, both regular soldiers and single men serving in the 1/Royal Welsh Fusiliers, became the fifth double-execution of the war.

Both had been involved in the fighting around Ypres when the battalion of 300 or so soldiers came under an intense attack from the Germans who, it seemed, had almost penetrated the Allied line. The commanding officer, according to Troughton, told him his brother had been killed along with hundreds of others in the attack.

Troughton said his commanding officers shouted ‘Everyone for himself’ so Troughton and, one assumes, Penn wandered off.

Troughton, along with Penn, was found guilty of deserting his post and executed on April 22, 1915.

Private James Grist Carr was a regular serving in the 2/Welsh 1 Division and was executed for desertion on February 7, 1916.

The circumstances surrounding his alleged desertion are vague. Reasons that led to his desertion are sketchy or nonexistent.

Private Anthony Victor O’Neill (some documents spell his surname as Neil) was a Kitchener volunteer serving with the 1/South Wales Borderers.

The reasons that led to his desertion are, again, sketchy or nonexistent. He was executed on April 30, 1915.

Private John Thomas, a reservist with the 2/Battalion Welsh Regiment 1 Division, was executed for desertion.

The 44-year-old from the Pembrokeshire village of Lamphey was married with three children.

In his defence he argued that, being much older than the majority of soldiers in the ranks, he found it difficult to keep up with them and had expected to be given a job behind the front line.

The argument was not received sympathetically – nor was his marital status nor that he was the father of three children.

He was executed on May 20, 1916.

Private George Watkins was a reservist with 13/Welsh Regiment who was twice wounded and then returned to the action following a period of convalescence.

He deserted his battalion, which was resting behind the lines, during December of 1916. The 32-year-old was shot on May 15, 1917.

Private William Jones, 9th Battalion Royal Welsh Fusiliers, was executed on October 25, 1917, for desertion.

Private Thomas Henry Basil Rigby – known as Harry – served with the 10th Battalion South Wales Borderers.

He was a brigade runner on the front line when he absconded from the recently-captured enemy trenches on the Ypres Salient in August 1917.

He was a recidivist already serving a three-year suspended sentence for desertion. The 21-year-old was executed at Armentières on November 22, 1917.

Private William Scholes, 2nd Battalion South Wales Borderers, was a conscript born in 1893.

He became the last man serving in a Welsh regiment to be executed for desertion or any other offence during the war.

He was executed on August 8, 1918, for desertion.

Sub-Lieutenant Edwin Leopold Arthur Dyett of Albany Road, Cardiff, 21, was shot dead on January 5, 1917 for desertion.

Another four soldiers were executed for murder.

Private Richard Morgan and Lance Corporal William Price were both serving with the 2/Welsh Regiment and were both from Rhondda. They were aged 32 and 41 respectively.

The two soldiers got drunk on the evening of January 20, 1915, and shot Company Sergeant Major Hugh Hayes.

Reports say Hayes had been victimising the pair. Both were executed on February 15, 1915.

Private Charles William Knight 28, was a Kitchener volunteer from London, serving with the 10th Battalion of the Royal Welsh Fusiliers.

He killed Private Alfred Edwards when he shot at his platoon while drunk. He was executed on November 15, 1915.

Private James Skone was a Kitchener volunteer from Pembroke attached to the 2/Welsh Regiment. He was placed on arrest for absence from duty got drunk and shot a man.

He was found guilty of murder and shot on May 10, 1918.

Shot at Dawn: The Fifteen Welshmen executed by the British Army in the First World War, published by The History Press, is £9.99

http://Source:http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/shot-dawn-15-welshman-executed-7879094ww.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/shot-dawn-15-welshman-executed-7879094

SEE ALSO :

http://democracyandclasstruggle.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/remembering-len-wincott-and-13-years-of.html

http://www.prole.info/pamphlets/mutinieswwi.pdf