Journalist Steve Sweeney was one of the members of the delegation from Britain prevented from reaching the headquarters of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) in The Hague on Tuesday. 

The delegation had requested an appointment with the OPCW, but in fact they couldn’t even arrive in The Hague.

“We tried everything possible to make our way from Britain, but as is so often the case, fate was conspiring against us,” said Sweeney to the activists waiting for the delegation in front of the OPCW offices.

Sweeney said that in fact, Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan should have been in The Hague, rather than the delegation, as he “should be facing charges of war crimes.  And the fact that he is not here is not some unfortunate accident, it is not through circumstances beyond our control, but it is deliberate. It is because the world imperialist powers are colluding to keep him out of it as he acts as Nato’s proxy in Syria and Iraq.”

Sweeney said that he has “spent more than a year documenting the crimes committed by the Turkish state in Iraqi Kurdistan. I have been bombed, shot at and threatened.

I have met villagers exposed to chemical weapons, medics who have been threatened into silence, their expert reports seized and altered.

I have seen KDP forces and Turkish soldiers working together, heard reports of the threats they have made to Kurdish villagers, documented the testimonies of a people living in fear of daily bombings, seen the ghost villages as thousands have been forced to flee their homes.

I have gathered samples of soil, clothing and hair from Kurdish villagers, seen and felt the burn marks on their bodies, gathered footage of chemical attacks and seen with my own eyes the scale of the Turkish military occupation of Kurdistan.”

On Tuesday, Sweeney planned to deliver his report to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, the OPCW, and to hand over a letter demanding a fact-finding team is sent to the region to carry out investigations.

“I was going to give them the samples I have collected from the region to enable them to conduct tests to determine the presence of banned chemicals. I have gathered together footage of what I believe to be chemical attacks in guerrilla tunnels and elsewhere in Iraqi Kurdistan.

But once again the OPCW has slammed the door in our faces. By refusing to meet and receive my evidence they have shown once more that they are nothing more than a tool of the imperialist powers.”

The OPCW has ignored letters from Kurdish organisations, dismissed appeals from politicians and refuses to even acknowledge the pleas of the very people it was established to protect.

“This politicised and secretive organisation blocked my media accreditation for its annual conference last year and refused to tell me why,” said Sweeney.