In 1999, by decision of the Greek government of Kostas Simitis and in particular of the then Foreign Minister Theodoros Pangallos, the leader of the PKK, Abdullah Ocalan, was handed to Turkey on a plate.
“He was hanging over all the towers, asking to land, no one would accept him, he grabbed us to save himself…”, wrote Savvopoulos about the case that still weighs on our consciences, concluding that “Look how one of us is running out of necessity in order not to be caught and we will be taken by the throat again, we are sick…”.
The same sense of shame and indignation is evoked by today’s decision of the Larnaca District Court and Judge Papathanasiou, who decided to finally extradite to Germany the Kurdish fighter Kenan Ayas.
Kenan Ayas, a political activist and intellectual, was arrested at Larnaca airport on 15 March because the Germans, in coordination with the Turks, issued an international warrant against him.
Ayas was born in 1974 in Kurdistan, which is in the territory of the Turkish state. He spent 12 years (1991 – 2003) in Turkish prisons because, as a student, he participated in demonstrations for Kurdish rights. There in Turkish prisons he lost his brother, who died in the Turkish prison, who died of torture by the Turks.
When he was released from prison, he and other Kurds founded the political organization “Group Researcher Training” which fought for Kurdish rights.
The Turks have argued and continue to argue that this organisation, like many others, is an offshoot of the PKK and therefore the participants in these organisations are automatically “terrorists” and should be prosecuted as such.
In fact, these organizations, which the Turks and their allies call “terrorist”, do nothing but articulate a politically coherent discourse on the oppression, persecution, mass killings, etc., that the Kurds are subjected to by the Turkish state.
Ayas has been persecuted by the Turkish state since 2003-2004. He arrived in Cyprus through Syria and is in our country under international protection and is recognized by the Republic of Cyprus as a political refugee.
Mr Agias is accused by the Germans of being the head of the Hamburg local organisation of the PKK, whose activities have been banned in Germany since November 1993.
But Kenan Ayas was not associated with the PKK. He was indeed organised and had a strong political activity in the Kurdish struggle, but always at a political level and not associated with organisations with armed activities.
The accusations that the Turks and Germans are making against him are therefore completely arbitrary and false.
The essence of the persecution of Ayas, like hundreds of other fighters, was and remains one: to silence by all means the voices that speak for the freedom of the Kurds and the genocidal policy of Ankara.
Today, with its shameful decision, the Larnaca District Court of Larnaca, has concluded the Turkish-German criminal persecution of the Kurdish fighters.
Judge Papathanasiou’s excuses that he made his decision on two conditions sound completely cheap. These “conditions” are
- a) the non-extradition of Ayas from Germany to Turkey
- b) the serving of any sentence decided by the German Court, in Cyprus
However, as thousands of Kurdish fighters, unlike Judge Papathanasiou, know very well due to their experience and experiences, these conditions are just empty words. The relations between Germany and Turkey are so strong that no “assurance” of a Cypriot provincial judge can overcome them. This means that if the decision of the Larnaca District Court to extradite the militant Kenan Agias is actually executed, Cyprus will be complicit in the torture of an intellectual militant, against whom there is absolutely no evidence of a criminal act, in the hands of the Germans and the Turks. Moreover, it will set a precedent for the unsafe hosting of political fighters, with all that this implies in terms of morality, credibility, etc…