September 19, 2010 by sks
Update on the Kurds on Hunger Strike in Denmark from the organising committee – 18 September 2010
Twenty-eight Kurds from Syria are now on the fifth day in front of the Danish parliament, Christiansborg Castle Square. Many in the group tell about mistreatment and torture by the Syrian regime
In a tent at Christiansborg Castle Square the Kurds from Syria have been on a hunger strike since Tuesday, 14 September. The group hunger strikes to stop the deportations by the Danish authorities into an unknown fate.
“We will continue the hunger strike until we are heard,” said Kek Ibo, spokesman for the Kurds. “If they are deported to Syria, they will all be greeted by persecution, imprisonment and torture, and therefore we have no other option than to try to let our voices be heard in Denmark and urge Danes to support our humanitarian action.
“Several hunger striking Kurds have previously experienced Syria’s repression of the Kurdish minority in a very close distant, where a systematic violation of human rights is an everyday basis,” says Hassan Abbas of Feykurd, Federation of Kurdish Associations in Denmark.
“About two-thirds of the Syrian Kurds have directly experienced mistreatment and torture in Syria,” says Rodi, one of the hunger strikers. “In the tent they are telling each about some of the cruel methods of prison treatment in Syria. They have been beaten with batons and thick cables, subjected to suspension and threats against their families. It sounds very rough, but that is truth, and that’s way it is inconceivable that the Danish government will send people back to such inhuman conditions.”
As several of this Kurds fled through Greece to Europe, they are to be deported to Greece according Dublin convention, from which they are afraid that they will be further deported by force to Syria.
“Greece, as the media also have described this week, is in no way an acceptable country to deport people,” says Said Parvin, who helps Kurdish refugees. The refugee situation in Greece is totally collapsed and the Syrian Kurds have no chance to get the smallest kind of fair treatment of their asylum applications. Denmark cannot use an expulsion to Greece as an excuse, and it is incomprehensible that they are even considering the possibility, simultaneously with a running case application at the European human rights court. ”
There have been many cases where coercive Kurdish deportees to Syria disappear without trace or end up in a cold prison with the daily torture as a result.
The frustrated hunger striker Kurds are determined to continue the strike until the authorities realize the seriousness and danger of the planned deportations
