Immigration - new material (27)
01 December 1996
REVIEW: The testimony of Kani Yilmaz: Kurdish political prisoner.
This pamphlet, published to mark the second anniversary of Kani Yilmaz' arrest, on 26 October 1994, contains his own testimony n the form of the affidavit submitted by him in the habeas corpus proceedings to challenge his detention and extradition together with pieces by John Austin Walker the MP who invited him to Britain and by solicitor Gareth Peirce.
In his affidavit Yilmaz describes his involvement in Kurdish self-determination issues which resulted in the formation of the Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK) in 1978 as a political organisation and his own arrest torture and imprisonment for advocating separatism. He served over 9 years of a 21-year sentence (with another eight years added on for running a political defence at his trial) before his release on licence. He escaped Turkey for Germany in 1993 to avoid re-arrest. He was recognised as a Convention refugee very quickly and became a high-profile spokesman for PKK/ERNK (the political wing of the PKK after the former adopted a military struggle in 1985). His visit to Britain in October 1994 was the fourth in a peace-seeking process; he brought with him the PKK's latest cease-fire proposals and hoped to persuade MPs to put pressure on the Turkish government to respond positively. He was briefly interviewed at Heathrow before being admitted. The Home Office justified his arrest at Westminster three days later by claiming his admission was a mistake . Held for deportation on national security grounds, within days he was the subject of a German extradition request relating to incidents 11 and 16 months old for which others had already been tried in Germany. Yilmaz makes a convincing case in support of his assertion that his detention the deportation decision and the attempted extradition are a show of bad faith by both Germany and Britain, pressured by the Turkish government, whose displeasure was to be avoided because of the huge privatisation programme underway in which large contracts in posts telecommunications bridge- building etc stood to be won. He reveals evidence of Turkish pressure on the British government after his admission to the UK, and an attempt at direct extradition to Turkey (impossible because of his refugee status). He demonstrates that the only evidence the German authorities can present in support of his extradition is his political activism and describes the criminalisation of those involved in the Kurdish struggle. In their companion pieces John Austin-Walker and Gareth Peirce point out the reduced safeguards under the European Convention on the Suppression of Terrorism and the evisceration of the political defence to criminal offences and extradition requests to the point where political motivation results in increased penalties rather than international protection.
Kurdish Community in the UK and Defend the Kurds - Defend Human and Civil Rights in Britain and Europe October 1996.