MESOP REPORT : KDP Security Forces Target KNK, DİHA, PÇDK

 19.5.2014 – (ANF/DIHOK) KDP security forces launched operations targeting representatives of the Kurdish National Congress (KNK), as well as many the offices and members of many other organizations earlier today in three major cities in the KRG. Many people are reported to have been taken into custody.

According to information now available, the operations took place in three cities – Hewler, Dihok and Zaxo – and targeted, among others, representatives of the KNK, members and offices of the Kurdistan Democratic Solution Party (PÇDK), of Dicle News Agency’s Hewler bureau, the Rojava Welat Newspaper, the Patriotic Youth Center, and the Organization of Free Women of Kurdistan (RJAK). Many were arrested and a large number of documents were seized.

The security operations follow an ongoing dispute over the KDP’s decisions to dig a border trench between the KRG and Rojava and to close the border crossings to Rojava refugees,  amid accusations that the KDP is working together with Turkey’s AKP government against the revolution in Rojava. The raids also follow the decision taken a number of days ago to proclaim the PÇDK illegal after it organized a demonstration in front of the KRG’s parliament to remember the massacre committed in Hewler by KDP forces in 1997. Many Kurdish organizations accuse the KDP of working together with Turkey in imposing the embargo the Rojava. KDP leader and KRG President Mesut Barzani accompanied Prime Minister Erdoğan at a political rally in Diyarbakir earlier this year.