First modification:
Thousands of members of the Kurdish community laid flowers and paid their respects on Tuesday, January 3, at the coffins of the three Kurdish victims murdered on December 23 in Paris. The Kurdish community in France refuses to believe the version of the Paris prosecutor’s office, according to which the act was committed by a racist shooter, and denounces a “terrorist” act, pointing fingers at Turkey.
In the commune of Villiers-le-Bel, some twenty kilometers north of the French capital, Paris, several thousand Kurds honored the memory of the three members of their community, assassinated on December 23 in the heart of Paris.
A crowd of about 10,000 people attended the victims’ funerals, according to police. Wrapped in the flags of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and Rojava – Kurdish territory in Syria – the coffins of the three deceased, two men and one woman, were received by an honor guard, tears and slogans such as ” martyrs are eternal!”
Des milliers de personnes sont réunies aujourd’hui pour rendre un dernier hommage à Evîn Goyî, Abdurrahman Kizil et Mîr Perwer, qui entrent dans l’histoire de la résistance des femmes et des peuples.
Les martyres ne meurent jamais! Live free Kurdistan!#Paris pic.twitter.com/0eegdbGFb2
— Movement of Kurdish women in France (@femmeskurdesTJK) January 3, 2023
Thousands of people came from all over France and Europe on specially chartered buses. But many – not being able to enter the room where the corpses were exposed under a portrait of Abdallah Ocalan, the historic leader of the PKK imprisoned in Turkey – had to follow the ceremony on the giant screens installed outside.
“We are here because it is our duty; because it is a fight that our parents have had for years and that we want to continue,” a 30-year-old woman, who did not want to give her name for security reasons, told the AFP news agency.
After numerous speeches, the community paid a final tribute to Abdurrahman Kizil, Mir Perwer, a Kurdish singer and political refugee, and Emine Kara, head of the Kurdish Women’s Movement in France. For almost an hour, thousands of people filed past the coffins to deposit a rose.
Rejection of the thesis of murder for racist reasons
“The indignation of the people gathered today (…) has shown us once again to what extent the Kurdish community believes that these murders are political murders, terrorist murders orchestrated by Turkey,” Agit Polak, spokesman for the Council, stressed to the press. Kurdish Democratic Party of France.
Many Kurds refuse to believe in a random act carried out by an isolated murderer with racist motives, as the thesis of the Paris prosecutor’s office has maintained. For them, the case is highly political; it is a “terrorist” act and they blame Turkey.
The three victims were shot to death in Paris in front of the Ahmet-Kaya Kurdish cultural center. The perpetrator of the attack, William Malet, was disarmed and detained after the attack.
According to the Parisian prosecutor’s office, the 69-year-old man, already known to the courts for acts of violence and who had just been released from pretrial detention for another case, expressed his “pathological hatred of foreigners (…)” and said he wanted to “murder migrants”. The former train conductor was arrested on December 26 for murder and attempted murder based on race, ethnicity, nation and religion.
But many Kurds continue to reject this theory and call for justice. His suspicions are even stronger because ten years ago three Kurdish activists were murdered in the same Paris neighborhood. A Turkish national, accused of acting on behalf of Ankara’s intelligence services, died of cancer in 2016 before his trial.
Late in the afternoon (local time), the crowd carried the three coffins in a final procession, accompanying them with pro-PKK slogans, before dispersing in silence. The corpses were then transferred to the airport to be buried in the Middle East.
This Wednesday a march will be held at the site of the massacre and another “big march” – initially planned for the tenth anniversary of the death of the PKK militants – will take place on Saturday in Paris.
AFP
