Members of Kurdish community rally in Beirut to mark 25 years since Turkey's detention of PKK leader

Описание: (12 Feb 2024)
LEBANON KURDISH PROTEST

SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS

RESTRICTION SUMMARY:

LENGTH: 1:56

ASSOCIATED PRESS
Beirut, Lebanon - 12 February 2024
1. Various of Kurdish protesters demonstrating in front of the building of United Nations Economic and Social Commission for West Asia (ESCWA), holding banners and photo of imprisoned Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan
2. SOUNDBITE (Arabic) Hanan Othman, protester:
“As a Kurdish-Lebanese community, we tell Ocalan that we stand with him and walk on his path, the path of democracy, freedom, and the path of human rights and women's freedom. We stand with him and raise our voice to the world to demand his freedom. It is time for the freedom of Ocalan and all political detainees and prisoners of conscience."

3. Lebanese policemen standing near protest
4. Various of protest
5. SOUNDBITE (Arabic) Mohammed Safa, protester:
"We assert and announce our full solidarity with the prisoner and leader Ocalan, who is arbitrarily detained in the Turkish fascist prisons. We are fully in solidarity because the suffering is one and the same. There is no difference between an Israeli prison, an Arab, Kurdish, French, or American one."

6. Various of protest
STORYLINE:
Dozens of members of the Kurdish community in Lebanon gathered outside the U.N. headquarters in Beirut on Monday to mark 25 years since the detention and trial of Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan in Turkey.

The protesters carried banners calling for Ocalan's release as well as for the protection of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces that control large parts of northeast Syria and are coming under attacks by Turkey's military.

Ocalan is the leader of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, that Turkey says has positions in Iraq and Syria and is blamed for attacks against Turkish troops.

“As a Kurdish-Lebanese community, we tell Ocalan that we stand with him and walk on his path," said Hanan Othman, one of the protesters who rallied in Beirut.

Ocalan has been serving a life term in prison on an island south of Istanbul since 1999, but retains influence over his fighters.

The PKK has waged an insurgency in southeast Turkey since 1984 and is considered a terrorist organization by Turkey, the United States and the European Union.

Turkey began talking to Ocalan in 2012 with the aim of ending the conflict, which has killed tens of thousands of people since 1984.

AP video shot by Fadi Tawil

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