The Iraqi army has been besieging the Maxmur Camp in southern Kurdistan (northern Iraq) since 20 May. The camp, which is self-governed by refugees from Northern Kurdistan near Hewlêr (Erbil), is intended to be fenced in and turned into a huge open-air prison with watchtowers. The 12,000 residents of the camp are resisting this, day and night. On Thursday, the Iraqi military positioned additional units at strategically important locations around the camp.

Kurdish activists are staging a civil disobedience action in protest at the Iraqi army's siege of the Maxmur camp in the premises of the Iraqi Consulate in Bern, the capital of Switzerland.

Young activists made the following statement denouncing the military action against Maxmur:

“We, the Kurdish youth, will not take a step back. We stand with the residents of the Maxmur camp. This is the decision of the people. We will resist here. Like the people of Maxmur, we will not surrender our will. We did not surrender our will to the Turkish state, nor will we abandon it to the Iraqi state. The siege of Maxmur, which is also a dirty project of the Turkish state, means the siege of all of us. To resist it is to live. We will succeed. Rojava and Shengal have succeeded, and Maxmur will, too.”