The Haringey Campaign to Defend Asylum Seekers send our support and solidarity to the Kurdish refugees on hunger strike in Plymouth. It is a basic human right to seek refuge from persecution, and the UK is flagrantly in breach of its obligations under the 1951 UN Convention to treat all asylum seekers in a just and humane way. When those rights are being breached people have to stand up and fight for them, and we salute the courage and resolution of the Kurdish hunger strikers in doing so.

In demanding fair treatment for refugees, we cannot forget that the UK bears a heavy responsibility for creating the conditions of oppression from which many refugees flee. This is never more true than in the case of the Kurdish people. In the aftermath of the First World War Britain and France carved up the defeated Ottoman Empire with complete disregard for the Kurdish nation to whom they had previously promised an independent Kurdistan. Since then the UK and other western powers have continued to trample on the rights and hopes of the people of the region, installing and arming repressive regimes to secure their control of the oil wealth of the Middle East and turning a blind eye on genocidal atrocities conducted against the Kurds by Saddam Hussein and the Turkish state.

The fight for human rights for refugees and the fight for justice for the Kurds and other oppressed peoples cannot be separated.
Human Rights for Refugees! Free Kurdistan!