Thousands of protesters marched in central Paris on Saturday to pay tribute to three Kurdish activists killed a decade ago.
The march, an annual event since the killings on January 9, 2013, came two weeks after a similar triple murder at the Kurdish Cultural Center in Paris on December 23 – only a few minutes’ walk from the site of the earlier shooting.
Organizers said that at least 25,000 people attended the rally from across Europe. Paris police put the figure at 10,000.
They carried banners with pictures of 2013 victims and slogans such as “Turkish government massacres three more Kurds” as they walked from Gare du Nord station in the north of the capital towards the Place de la République, a popular place for demonstrations were walking ,
In 2013, Sakin Cansiz, 54, the founder of the PKK Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has long waged an insurgency against Turkey, was killed by a shot in the head.
Two other women were murdered in a similar fashion: 28-year-old Fidan Dogan and 24-year-old Leyla Saylemez at the Kurdish Information Center in the 10th arrondissement of Paris.
According to an AFP estimate, more than 1,200 people marched in the southern French city of Marseille; 800 according to the local police.
The PKK, which fights for increased autonomy for the Kurdish population, is considered a terrorist organization by Turkey, the United States, and the European Union.
Turkey is a member of NATO and is considered vital to the security of the southeastern part of the military alliance.
‘Debt of Justice’
A Turkish maintenance worker at Charles de Gaulle airport was due to go on trial for the 2013 attack, but he died of a brain tumor in December 2016, shortly before the trial was due to begin.
Kurdish activists in France, home to the second-largest Kurdish community in the European Union after Germany, have always believed the Turkish secret service ordered the killings, a charge Ankara has always denied.
In May 2019, a French anti-terrorism judge was tasked with reopening the investigation. But the families of the victims say the investigation is being hampered by a lack of access to secret documents they say France has refused to make public.
Sakin Cansiz’s brother Metin Cansiz told AFP before Saturday’s march: “France owes us justice.”
He added that his family had lost a loved one “sacrificed” at the altar of Franco-Turkish relations.
In last month’s attack, Abdurrahman Kizil, singer Mir Perver and Emin Kara, leader of the Kurdish women’s movement in France linked to the PKK, were shot by a man named William Mallet.
French prosecutors say the suspect, a retired rail worker, admitted wanting to “kill migrants”, but several Kurds who spoke to AFP said they suspected a “terrorist” act perpetrated by the Turkish state.
The killings sparked a major protest by Kurds in Paris on 24 December.
“People from every country live where the attack took place,” a Kurdish activist named Fatna told AFP about the attack last month.
“But it was only Kurdish people, everyone in the street with businesses knows a Kurd, who were attacked.”
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(This story has not been edited by News18 staff and is published from a syndicated news agency feed)