A Kurdish man sets himself on fire in Germany pro-Ocalan protest
A Kurdish man sets himself on fire in protest of arresting Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan, 1999. Photo: AP
BERLIN,— A Kurdish man was seriously injured after setting himself on fire in Germany Wednesday as a protest against Turkey’s detention of Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan, police said.
“The 43-year-old doused himself with a liquid and then set himself on fire” outside the courthouse in the western city of Krefeld, police said in a statement.
Bystanders doused the flames with blankets and a fire extinguisher, and a rescue helicopter took the man to hospital.
“According to witnesses, he said he was protesting against the detention of Ocalan and against German police violence,” said the statement, adding that they were also investigating a possible “personal motive” and mental health issues.
Last Friday was the 20th anniversary of the day when Turkish secret service agents caught Ocalan in Kenya, outside the Greek embassy in Nairobi — on February 15, 1999.
A Kurdish man, Ugur Sakar, sets himself on fire as a protest against Turkey’s detention of Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan, February 20, 2019. Photo: ANF
Ocalan, who was arrested 20 years ago, is serving a life sentence on Imrali island, close to Istanbul.
A large Kurdish community in Turkey and worldwide openly sympathise with PKK rebels and Abdullah Ocalan, who founded the PKK group in 1974 and currently serving a life sentence in Turkey, has a high symbolic value for most Kurds in Turkey and worldwide according to observers.
Kurds see Ocalan, called “leader of the Kurdish people” by his followers and “head of the PKK terrorist organisation and separatist leader” by Turkish officials and media, as a living symbol of the Kurdish cause in Turkey.
The PKK took up arms in 1984 against the Turkish state, which still denies the constitutional existence of Kurds, to push for greater autonomy in Turkish Kurdistan for the Kurdish minority who make up around 22.5 million of the country’s 79-million population. More than 40,000 Turkish soldiers and Kurdish rebels, have been killed in the conflict.
Copyright © 2019, respective author or news agency, AFP | Ekurd.net
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