Statement on raid of Palestinian NGOs

The Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers unequivocally condemns the latest assault on Palestinian civil society by the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) directed by Benny Gantz, Defence Minister for the Israeli Government.

On 18 August 2022, six prominent Palestinian NGOs based in the West Bank – Al-Haq, Addameer, Bisan Center, Defense for Children International-Palestine (DCI-P), the Union of Agricultural Works Committees (UAWC), and the Union of Palestinian Women’s Committees (UPWC) – had their offices raided by the IDF, with files and equipment being seized in the process and their doors welded shut. At the entrance of each office, military orders were left declaring that the organisations were illegal. This follows the six NGOs being proscribed as ‘terrorist organisations’ last October, a move which has been condemned by the European Union, Amnesty and Oxfam amongst other international civil society organisations and NGOs. In April, the United Nations condemned the move, saying the designations were ‘not accompanied by any public and credible evidence’.

In a press conference following the raid, Al-Haq’s director, Shawan Jabarin said that the NGOs will ‘continue our work defending justice and international law.’ It is clear that the Israeli clampdown on Palestinian civil society is an attempt to repress organisations that document human rights abuses and use the framework of international law in order to hold the Israeli state to account. Michael Sfard, lawyer for some of the designated groups, said that the attacks were motivated ‘out of a desire to frustrate the International Criminal Court proceedings’ which Israel has continued to not cooperate with. The last 12 months has seen increased pressure on the six NGOs, including intimidation against staff, judicial harassment and travel bans.

The Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers condemns these attacks against human rights defenders and civil society organisations at the hands of the Israeli Government. The Haldane Society stands in solidarity with our colleagues across Historic Palestine who face intimidation and threats to their lives for documenting human rights abuses and providing crucial legal support to those who face the brunt of Israeli state violence.

- Haldane calls for Israel to rescind the decision to designate the six NGOs as ‘terrorist organisations’ and to cancel the military orders, in order to allow Palestinian human rights defenders to continue doing the vital work they do;

- Haldane calls on other international civil society organisations to counter these sustained attacks on Palestinian civil society by refusing to recognise these malicious designations, and to continue funding their crucial work;

- Haldane continues to insist that all European states are under an obligation to do everything in their power to bring to an end the illegality and oppression of Israel’s continued occupation since 1967, which is the root cause of the current violence;

- Haldane urges all European states to give the maximum support to the ICC and its new Prosecutor in carrying out their investigation without hindrance, in particular Israel, which has effectively declared war on the ICC.

ELDH Statement – Restore rights and values at Europe’s borders

Statement from our affiliate organisation, European Association of Lawyers for Democracy & World Human Rights (‘ELDH’):

ELDH condemns the cynical killings and beatings of migrants by both Moroccan and Spanish Border Forces at Melilla on 24 June 2022. They are being used as political pawns. We urge a humanitarian response from the African Union, the EU and its Member States to require both Morocco and Spain to respond in a humane manner in line with their international legal obligations.

The enclaves of Melilla and Ceuta in Northern Morocco were retained as Spanish Territory when Morocco gained independence in 1956. They are therefore the first European externalised borders and have long been the scene of unlawful killings of migrants attempting to cross into Europe.

The killing of at least 37 people (Moroccan Human Rights Group AMDH estimate) by Moroccan security forces and the injury of over 100 others trying to cross from Morocco to Spain on 24 June is the largest and most brutal. Migrants are used as pawns in negotiations over the independence of Western Sahara as prior to Spain’s endorsement of Morocco’s autonomy plan for Western Sahara in May. Morocco had “turned a blind eye” to migrants crossing into Spanish territory (10,000 in May 2021 and nearly 500 in early June 2022). Western Sahara’s pro-independence Polisario Front wants a UN supervised referendum on self-determination.

Thousands of vulnerable migrants remain stranded in Morocco. This is a continuing humanitarian crisis which causes immense suffering.

Highly vulnerable groups are weaponised in this struggle. They include many Victims of Trafficking fleeing war and persecution in sub Saharan Africa.

ELDH therefore proposes the following responses:

Access to seeking asylum at the border

Access to Spain should be allowed both in law and in practice in accordance with EU and international law, irrespective of the manner of arrival. Spanish and Moroccan Border Officers should refrain from the use of excessive force. Measures aimed at preventing people from accessing EU territory such as forceful pushbacks, beatings and killings must be prohibited.

We call on the European Union and other relevant international and regional actors to ensure:

Human rights based border governance

Safe migration pathways

Individual assessment of asylum claims

Protection from collective expulsions, arbitrary arrest and detention

EU response

The EU, its commission and member states must respond to the border crisis in accordance with their international obligations, not bow to pressure from Spain. There should be no derogation from the current political and legal framework which can ensure a humane transition for those currently suffering on the externalised European borders at Melilla and Ceuta.

Spanish and Moroccan Enquiry

Spain and Morocco should give a swift and public condemnation of the recent events, outlining steps to carry out an effective and independent investigation into the circumstances of the deaths and injuries, identifying those responsible and ensuring accountability.

UN Special Rapporteur on Refugees

The Special Rapporteur should carry out an independent enquiry into the events in Melilla of 24th June 2022.

Migrants detained in Melilla and Ceuta

International standards of accommodation should be maintained for those currently detained.

International Access

The border should be accessible to international media and monitored by independent actors to ensure that EU and international law is respected. Acts of violence by state enforcers and others should be condemned and investigated.

Statement against war crimes committed in Palestine and Israel

The Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers expresses its grave concern at the latest outbreak of violence in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPTs).

As a result of the violence so far, at least 230 Palestinians have been killed, including 65 children, in Gaza, by Israeli airstrikes. Palestinian rocket fire has so far killed 12 in Israel, including one child. On 11 May 2021, the Israel Defence Forces stated that at least 15 of the 230 Palestinian casualties were confirmed members of Hamas. As of 19 May 2021, the Palestinian National Authority reported injuries for at least 1710 Palestinians, while as of 12 May Israel reported at least 200 injured Israelis. Haldane notes this disparity.

As of 19 May, at least 72,000 Palestinians have been displaced. Calls for a ceasefire were first proposed on 13 May by Hamas, but rejected by Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has so far been resisting calls by the USA. for a ceasefire.

There is no doubt that war crimes have been committed both by Israel, in deliberately targeting civilians and causing wanton damage, and by Hamas, in firing rockets at Israel civilians.

On 3 March 2021 Fatou Bensouda, Prosecutor at the International Criminal Court (ICC) announced the Investigation by her Office into crimes alleged to have been committed in the Situation in Palestine since 13 June 2014. The territorial scope of the ICC’s criminal jurisdiction extends to Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. The ICC has already been denounced by Mr Netanyahu as an anti-Israeli conspiracy, but Haldane urges all European states to give their full support to the ICC’s investigation, which will extend to all individuals, Israeli or Palestinian, suspected of committing crimes under the Rome Statute of the ICC.

The present violence started on 6 May 2021, when Palestinian protests began in Jerusalem over an anticipated decision of the Supreme Court of Israel on the eviction of six Palestinian families from Sheikh Jarrah in occupied East Jerusalem. Under international law, the area, illegally annexed by Israel in 1980, is part of the Palestinian territories that Israel occupied in 1967. The protests quickly escalated into violent confrontations between Jewish and Palestinian protesters. On 7 May, Israeli police stormed the compound of the al-Aqsa Mosque, the third-holiest site in Islam.

Haldane recalls that its longstanding Executive Committee member and International Secretary, Professor Bill Bowring, was a member of the English lawyers’ Mission to Sheikh Jarrah in December 2010. In its report, published in May 2011 by Avocats Sans Frontières, and available on the ELDH website (https://eldh.eu/en/), the Mission gave full details of the relevant international law, and of the aggressive attempts by Israeli settlers to evict Palestinian families from their homes by force. The events of May 2021 are a continuation of this aggression and illegality. By tragic coincidence, 15 May 2021 was Nakba Day, the annual day of commemoration of the Nakba, also known as the Palestinian Catastrophe, which saw the destruction of Palestinian society and its homeland in 1948, and the permanent displacement of a majority of the Palestinian people.

On 12 January 2021 the Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem, published its momentous Report “A regime of Jewish supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea: This is apartheid”. It stated that Israel’s regime of apartheid and occupation is inextricably bound up in human rights violations. It explained in detail why Israel’s regime is correctly described in international law as apartheid. On 27 April 2021 Human Rights watch followed with its Report entitled “A Threshold Crossed

Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution”.

These are amongst the crimes to be investigated by the ICC.

• Haldane insists that all European states are under an obligation to do everything in their power to bring to an end the illegality and oppression of Israel’s continued occupation since 1967, which is the root cause of the current violence. Instead, the EU and the UK have continued to collude with Israel.

• Haldane urges all European states to give the maximum support to the ICC and its new Prosecutor in carrying out their investigation without hindrance, in particular Israel, which has effectively declared war on the ICC.

• Haldane demands that all parties to the conflict, in particular Israel, which has the overwhelming preponderance of military power, and which is responsible of the illegality which gives rise to the present violence, cease their military activities forthwith.

Solidarity with Black Lives Matter following the killing of George Floyd

The Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers stands in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement globally.

On the 25th May 2020 in Minneapolis, an African-American male was murdered by the state. His name is George Floyd. George was subject to extreme police violence which resulted in his death. A video circulated showing a White male officer kneeling on his neck. The officer continued to do this for several minutes even as George told him he could no longer breathe. George was not resisting arrest and was in handcuffs, and the footage shows him in pain and distress. George pleas for help were ignored and his life cut short because of the actions of the police.

This comes just after the recent arrest of a former police officer for the racist murder of Ahmaud Arbery. He was murdered because a former officer and his son thought Ahmaud, who was out jogging in a white middle-class neighbourhood, was a burglar. It took public outcry on social media about the murder (which happened on 23rd February 2020 ) and video circulation of the incident for an arrest to take place on the 7th May 2020.

This is not the first instance in which black people have felt the heavy hand of the police since the lockdown measures came into place.

Since lockdown measures began, Black people in the UK and aboard have been subject to a tirade of disproportionate policing. The latest, resulting in the death of George Floyd.

The UK is not exempt from this. Black men in the UK are 40 times more likely to be stopped and search by the police. Black men also disproportionately die as a result of the use of force or restraint by the police.

The Haldane Society stands with Black Lives Matter globally and calls for an end to racist policing.

Please support Haldane in condemning the recent unjust Murder of George Floyd and many others on social media by tweet #Justceforgeorgefloyd online and using the #blacklivesmatter hashtag. Please also donate and support the Black Lives Matter movement on their page.

You can also support some UK racial justice organisations here.

Statement against the prosecution of Paul and Sam Newey

The Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers condemns the decision to prosecute Paul and Sam Newey, who attended court remotely on 7 May, and urges that all charges against them be dropped.

Both are charged with supporting terrorism. Paul is charged with funding terrorism for allegedly sending a sum of £150 to his son Dan who in 2017 joined the People’s Protection Unit (YPG) in Rojava (the autonomous region of North and East Syria, western Kurdistan) in their fight to defend themselves against Da'esh (ISIS). Sam is accused of engaging in conduct to assist his brother to prepare or instigate acts of terrorism.

The Haldane Society also urges the release of Dan Burke, currently remanded in custody pending trial on terrorism charges related to fighting with the YPG.

The YPG is not a terrorist organisation and those who support them should not be liable to prosecution under terrorism related legislation. The YPG and its sister organisation the YPJ have defended the people of the autonomous region of Rojava first against Da’esh, and then, following the defeat of Da'esh due in large part to their efforts, against invasion from the Turkish state. The decision to treat the YPG as a terrorist organisation must be understood in the context of European states' capitulation to Turkish geopolitical interests, in an effort to maintain the violent externalisation of the EU's borders.

In line with its historic persecution of Kurdish people within its own territory, and viewing the existence of an autonomous Kurdish region as an existential threat, Turkey has repeatedly attacked Rojava. This has been both militarily, through the invasion and ongoing occupation of Afrin and airstrikes on the border in October 2019 following the withdrawal of US forces, and also through violent enactment of settler colonialism, enforcing demographic change by replacing Kurdish families in the region with displaced Arab families from other parts of Syria and Palestine (with Erdogan even stating that desert-dwelling Arabs were more suited to the region than mountain-dwelling Kurds).

Not only is Turkey a member of NATO, but the 2016 EU-Turkey deal made it an outpost of fortress Europe as Turkey agreed to stem the “flow” of refugees into European states in exchange for €6bn in EU aid. As a result, Erdogan has been able to weaponise EU anti-migration border politics, notably through lifting controls on migrants leaving Turkey on 28 February this year after suffering a heavy military loss in north-west Syria. This was with the aim of pressuring the EU to support its offensives in Syria, including those against the YPG and YPJ.

It is in this context that the prosecution of Paul and Sam Newey on terrorism-related charges must be understood. It must be seen also as part of an ongoing practice of raids, arrests and criminalisation of the Kurdish community and allies in the UK, as well as the recent inclusion of many leftist and anti-fascist groups in counter-terrorism policing guidance. The British state's willingness to criminalise its own citizens and their family members for fighting fascist forces should be deeply troubling to us all, and must be resisted.

Statement regarding the proposed extradition of Julian Assange to the United States

The Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers opposes the extradition of journalist and publisher Julian Assange to the United States of America. We are gravely concerned that any extradition would legitimise the extra-territorial over-reach of the US state, who are which is proposing to try Mr Assange, a non-US citizen, in the US under US laws, without First Amendment protections of free speech. If extradited, Mr. Assange, will be placed in administrative detention and, if convicted, he faces a possible prison sentence of 175 years for his actions that revealed serious war crimes. Permitting the extradition of Mr. Assange to the United States would therefore set a dangerous precedent.

The Haldane Society also notes that the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, and United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention have found Mr Assange to be a victim of prolonged and severe psychological torture and arbitrary detention. Given these findings, we urge the British government to observe its duties under international law and domestic law, to investigate and to take appropriate action to address any breaches of Mr Assange’s human rights.

We are also deeply concerned about the breaches of Mr Assange’s rights to privacy and to legal privilege. Mr Assange, like all other accused, has the right to a free and fair trial. The British state is required to afford all defendants their human rights, to honour international law whether deriving from treaty or from international custom and practice, and to ensure that British domestic law is upheld. Such considerations are not intended to be optional or dependent on the nature of the crime, the nature of the circumstances or the discretion of the judge or the State.

At the present time of pandemic, the Haldane Society also strongly supports Mr Assange’s request for immediate bail, given his chronic lung and other medical conditions, the expert testimony regarding the spread of COVID-19 in prisons and other detention facilities, and the risks therefore arising to the life of Mr Assange and all prisoners from potential exposure.

Imprisoned lawyers in Turkey: how can we show solidarity?

5 April 2020 will be the 60th dayof hunger strikes for 4 Turkish lawyers in prison for defending their clients.

Join us to hear about their case and to find out how we can show internaitonal solidarity in the time of Corona.

Via Zoom:
Meeting ID: 549371600
Password: 004126

Any questions to mmunrokerr@gmail.com

Statement condemning Turkey's invasion of Rojava / North Eastern Syria

1.     The Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers denounces Turkey’s invasion of North East Syria, which constitutes a gross violation of international law by the Turkish Republic and its officials. The Haldane Society also condemns in the strongest possible terms the facilitation of this invasion by the U.S. and the complicity of E.U. states, including the U.K.

 2.     On Sunday 6th October 2019, the White House issued a statement announcing its withdrawal of U.S forces from the Turkey-Syria border and effectively giving the green light to Turkey’s “long-planned operation into Northern Syria”, following a phone conversation between U.S President Donald Trump and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey. On Wednesday the 9th of October 2019, Turkey began its assault.

 3.      Kurdish forces have led the fight to defend the world against the brutal facism of ISIS. 11,000 predominantly Kurdish women and men gave their lives in this struggle against terrorism, as did 10 British citizens, and 24,000 were injured. Kurdish organisations have established one of the most peaceful regions in the middle east – the Autonomous Administration of North East Syria (also known as Rojava); a secular multicultural democracy based on principles of direct democracy, pluralism, women’s liberation, ecological justice and cooperative economy. 

The crime of aggression

4.     Turkey’s invasion of Rojava is a violation of the prohibition of the use of force set out in Article 2(4) of the Charter of the United Nations, which is not only a treaty obligation but is also a principle of customary international law. There is no exception to the prohibition of the use of force under the right to self-defense in these circumstances.

5.     When Turkey invaded Afrin in March 2018, the Turkish presidential spokesman maintained Turkey was exercising its right to self-defense pursuant to Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, claiming there had been 700 attacks against Turkish cities. This claim was later reported to be unfounded.

 6.     Likewise, there is no evidence to support Turkey’s assessment of the present situation. Erdogan says Turkey is acting to prevent the creation of a ‘terror corridor’, claiming the people’s protection units – the YPG and YPJ – are a terrorist organisation. On the contrary, these are the forces that have sacrificed the most to both ideologically and militarily defeat terrorism in the region. Moreover, far from launching any attacks against Turkey, in August 2019 the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), implemented a demilitarised ‘peace corridor’ along the Turkish-Syrian border in response to Turkey’s supposed security concerns – pulling back their weapons and forces by 5 to 14 kilometers along the border area and allowing U. S and Turkish patrols in good faith.

7.     In the absence of an armed attack against Turkey, Turkey’s military offensive constitutes a violation of Article 2(4) of the Charter.  The pretext of preventing the creation of a ‘terror corridor’ does not legitimise Turkey’s military offensive under Article 51 of the Charter, as customary international law only recognises anticipatory self-defence as lawful when an attack is imminent.

8.     Turkey’s use of force in invading Rojava in a manner inconsistent with the Charter of the United Nations therefore constitutes an act of Aggression as defined in Article 1 and 3(1) of UN General Assembly resolution 3314 (XXIX) and within the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court (ICC). Even though Turkey is not a state party to the Rome Statute of the ICC, the ICC’s jurisdiction over the crime of Aggression allows the UN Security Council to refer a situation for investigation by the prosecutor under Article 13 of the Rome Statute of the ICC.

War Crimes, Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity

9.    Erdogan has declared that his intention in invading Rojava is to establish a “safe zone” stretching 50 miles from the Turkish border, as far as Raqqa and Deir al-Zour (the full extent of the Kurdish-controlled region), in order to resettle millions of Arab-Syrian refugees. This would constitute a dramatic demographic change in the historically Kurdish and multi-ethnic region. There is substantial evidence to suggest that Erdogan’s real intention is to carry out ethnic cleansing and genocide against Kurdish, Yezidi and Christian populations, as Genocide Watch has recently warned. Such actions would constitute as crimes under Articles 6 and 7 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.

10.  The invasion of the Afrin canton in 2018 and its subsequent occupation by Turkish forces and Turkish controlled, armed and funded jihadist groups has forcibly displaced thousands and led to atrocities such as kidnapping, extortion, murder, torture, rape, gender-based violence, which Amnesty International has denounced as war crimes, per the definition in Article 8 of the Rome Statute. There is no reason to suggest that Turkey has different plans for the rest of Rojava.  

Erga Omnes Obligation

11.  Turkey’s invasion is unquestionably an act of aggression and runs a grave risk of causing genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. The invasion as such constitutes the violation of erga omnes obligations under international law. This means that the legal interests of all states are engaged. It also places a legal obligation on all states not to recognise illegal situations such as invasion and occupation stemming from breaches of erga omnes obligations or to render aid or assistance in maintaining the situation created by the breach.

12.  The Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers therefore calls upon the UK government to fulfil its obligations under international law not to recognise or render aid or assistance in Turkey’s invasion of Rojava by immediately:

i.         Ending all weapons sales and exports from the UK to Turkey

ii.        Ending all UK provision of security and intelligence to Turkey

iii.        Using its position at the UN Security Council to achieve a no-fly zone over Rojava as well as sanctions, particularly an arms embargo, against Turkey.

iv.    Ending the EU-Turkey deal, which provides billions of euros to the Turkish state and enables Erdogan to weaponise the suffering of millions of displaced people in attempts to blackmail the EU into complicity with its invasion.

Solidarity with the International Working Women’s Day Strike 2019

Today, for the third year running, women across the world are going on strike as part of a militant, joyful feminist international, against a world lurching towards barbarism.

With fascism on the march, emboldened by the ascent to power of far-right politics in the U.S.A, Brazil, Poland, India, and Italy, feminist movements in the past year have continued to occupy the front-line of the international fight against barbarism. Among these: the Ele Não movement against Jair Bolsonaro’s fascism in Brazil; the Marea Verde for free, safe, legal abortion in Argentina; the Keralan women who formed a 620 km long human chain to protest for equality in India, the Ni Una Menos movement across Latin America, the Ni Una di Meno movement resisting Salvini’s ‘Security law’ in Italy, and the Kurdish women’s revolution which continues to be instrumental in both the military and ideological defeat of ISIS.

Here in the UK, the past year has seen migrant women in precarious work organise strikes in London, and thousands of public sector working women on strike in Glasgow, as well as the growth of a new feminist anti-fascist movement, which in December led the march against Tommy Robinson and Fortress Britain, carrying a vast banner that read “The enemy doesn’t arrive by boat, he arrives by limousine.”

By withdrawing waged and unwaged labour today, the feminist international is making visible - and making connections between - the many forms of work women do: from the exploitative work of commodity production to the invisibilized work of social reproduction; from the struggle for bodily autonomy, to the struggle for anti-imperialist self-determination; from the fight against gender violence and femicide, to the fight against capitalist extractivism and ecocide. As the Feminist International says, this is a movement that is shaped by feminist movements in the South, and is unequivocally anti-colonial, anti-cisheterosexist, anti-racist and anti-capitalist.

It is a fight to change not only our conditions of work, but our world. In the words of Women’s strike UK: “We are not asking for our fair share under capitalism, we are seeking to destroy altogether a system that is designed to divide and oppress us.”

The Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers stands in full solidarity with the International Working Women’s Day strike.

We call for donations to the UK Women’s Strike Fund, to help offset the costs to women leaving work and attending strike action and women’s assemblies.

Forward comrades, to a red feminist horizon!

Haldane Condemns the Turkish invasion of Afrin, Northern Syria

We call on the leaders of the U.K., and all other world powers to condemn Turkey's unprovoked attack on the people of Afrin in Syria.

Afrin, whose population is predominantly Kurdish, but is also made up of Arabs, Yezidis, Armenian and Assyrian Christians, among many others,  has until now been one of the most stable and secure regions in Syria. With very little international aid, Afrin has taken in so many Syrian refugees in the last five years that its population has doubled to 400,000. While it's defenders, the YPG or People’s Protection Units, are part of the Syrian Democratic Forces allied with the US military in its war with the Islamic State, Afrin itself is surrounded by enemies: Turkish-supported jihadi groups, al Qaeda, and Turkey.

Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan first threatened, and is now making good on his threats to attack the region, simply on ideological grounds, without even the pretext of the YPG having attacked or threatened them in any way. This is an act of unilateral violence, and as such, a violation of Nuremberg principles (that waging a war of aggression is the “supreme war crime”), and, if recent statements by Erdogan are to be believed, the ultimate intention of the Turkish invasion is to carry out a campaign of ethnic cleansing against the regions Kurdish population. It is unusual that a military incursion is begun with an open declaration of an intention to commit war crimes; but in this instance that appears to be the case.

This makes the UK government response all the more extraordinary. Spokespersons for Theresa May, and Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, have effectively supported the invasion, declaring that “Turkey has a right to want to keep its borders secure.” By this logic any country on earth would have the right to invade any of its neighbours at any time.

Until now, the region has been the place of a world-historical democratic experiment. Local assemblies and councils, women's councils, and assemblies have been created, along with women's police and military units; the YPG also has a long track record of setting up local democratic governing councils in each of the towns it has liberated from ISIS. It has made repeated statements that it has no interest in Turkey and wishes to function only as a defense force for Syrian Kurds and other ethnicities living in the Democratic Federation of Northern Syria (DFNS), also known as “Rojava,” which includes Afrin. Rather, it is this very democratic ideology that the Turkish government objects to, claiming it is inspired by the “terrorist” PKK. In other words, rather than welcoming a feminist, ecological, democratic experiment, international powers are siding with a power who is unleashing an unprovoked military assault on the region for just that reason.

Turkey has now begun an overwhelming air assault and ground invasion of Afrin, which has already resulted in significant civilian casualties. Some of these were ironically, refugees who had fled other regions of Syria for Afrin's relative stability and safety.

This attack is a blatant act of aggression against a peaceful and democratically-governed region and population. The Kurdish people have endured the loss of thousands of young men and women who joined the YPG, and YPJ women’s force, to rid the world of ISIS. The U.K. and the international community (U.S., Russia, E.U. members, etc)  have a moral obligation to stand behind the Kurdish people, Yezidi people, and others threatened with ethnic cleansing. We call on U.K. officials to demand Turkey pull back it's invading forces immediately and to cease threats against its neighbours.