UK & GERMANY: The targeting and criminalisation of Kurdish refugees
01 March 2002
Kurdish refugee communities in the UK and Germany have been on the receiving end of intensive targeting and criminalisation "by state and non-state actors" since the 1980s. This is the conclusion reached in a report by Desmond Fernandes. The targeting and criminalisation of immigrants and refugees is identified as a chief trait of immigration policies at both EU and national levels. The role of international geopolitics, police surveillance and harassment, the role of the media and political parties, and the violence of far-right groups are also highlighted.
The use of the asylum system by UK authorities includes the rejection of refugees in cases where it was recognised that they suffered persecution and torture, and the exclusion of people whose asylum claims had not been heard. Asylum applications by Kurds from Iraq and Turkey in 2000 were routinely rejected, in spite of continued bombing in northern Iraq by US, UK and Turkish aircraft, and Turkish army bombing raids on civilians. Thousands of asylum seekers are detained in prisons and detention centres in Britain every year.
The targeting of Kurds in Germany is also characterised by blanket rejections of asylum applications and deportation to Turkey (which sometimes directly leads to mistreatment on their return).
Key to this is Germany's "alliance" (through NATO) with the Turkish state, as well as business and strategic interests in Turkey, leading to an extension Turkish persecutory policies against Kurds. These include the decisions to ban the PKK and to allow the deportation of Kurds for carrying out "criminal offences" (such as distributing PKK propaganda).
Lawyer Gareth Peirce criticises anti-terrorist cooperation between the UK and Turkey for criminalising the Kurdish refugee community:
Without engaging the legitimacy of a Kurdish struggle for national rights, the British police have deliberately worked to cast doubt on every Kurd in the UK as a terrorist suspect
This view is supported by evidence that the Kurdish community is subject to surveillance by the Metropolitan Police Special Branch, infiltration by MI5 agents and undercover police officers.
The proscription of the PKK in 2001 under the Terrorism Act 2000 is likely to criminalise many forms of support and fundraising (a person wearing a T-shirt that carries images or symbols supporting the PKK may be liable to six months in prison).
In Germany, it has been shown that MIT (Turkish intelligence) and FAS (Iranian intelligence) psychological warfare operations have resulted in misinformation and the use of agents provocateurs to discredit Kurdish refugees. Turkish agents carried out criminal acts (including arson against Turkish businesses) in order to blame Kurdish activists, were caught and subsequently expelled from Germany.
The report also documents cooperation between German and Iranian security services, the FAS monitoring of Iranians living in Germany and the exposing of Iranian agent and agent provocateur Hamid Khorsand in 2000. The role of German security services in ensuring that Kurds (especially from Turkey) cannot escape persecution outside their country of origin cannot be underestimated. In 1987 there was the now infamous PKK show trials followed by the outlawing of the PKK and other 35 organisations said to be linked to the PKK in 1993 under German anti-terrorist legislation.
The media, political parties, racists and far-right groups have also played a role, which has been heightened by policies such as dispersal and vouchers for asylum seekers in the UK. The Dover Express's description of Kurdish and Kosovar refugees as "human sewage" is a case in point, as is the Sighthill estate in Glasgow, where there have been over 70 racist attacks, including a murder.
The dangerous stereotypes portrayed in the media and by government sources had the effect of "making it acceptable for many Germans to endorse government and neo-Nazi actions against the pro-PKK Kurdish refugees