Kurdish Communities Union (KCK) Executive Council Presidency has released a statement strongly responding to the statements that AKP officials and local administrators made following the Lice attack in which one person was killed and ten others were wounded while protesting against the construction of military guard posts in the village of Yakacık on 28 June.

Pointing out that the practices of the AKP government and its policies for the suppression of Kurds served for blocking the democratic liberation process, KCK remarked that the government not only sprayed bullets on Kurdish people but also manipulated the public opinion by means of fabricated statements targeting Kurds. KCK said the aim of these manipulative statements was to suppress the reactions against the construction of military guard posts which -it underlined- was a practice conflicting with the resolution process, and to eliminate the legitimate stance of these reactions.

KCK evaluated the Lice attack as the manifestation of the government's insistence on its exploitative mindset. KCK strongly criticized the statements of government officials and the Governor of Diyarbakır who claimed that “PKK (Kurdistan Workers' Party) has provoked these protests because of the financial damage it suffered after the operations against their activities of cannabis production and sale”.

“This means nothing but AKP government's efforts to find excuses for all exploitative practices it makes. This kind of statements are a consequence of an inconclusive political immorality. Drug trafficking takes place in Turkey, like anywhere else in the world, as a result of the toleration and connivance of the state. It is known to both local and foreign public opinion that a number of units of the Turkish state have cooperated with such dirty works within the last 30 years of war”, KCK underlined and remarked that the Turkish state nevertheless intended to identify the Kurdish movement with drug trafficking in order to cover up its crime at the international level.

Noting that Diyarbakır Governor's statements were a part of this policy, KCK urged the AKP government and the governor to prove their allegations.

KCK pointed out that PKK has been financing itself with the labor and elbow grease of the Kurdish people, and that it has never been involved in drug trafficking, nor made after unjust profit and interest. The struggle PKK is giving at the same time stands against this kind of unlawful profits and their centers, it said and added that the Kurdish people should display their fair reaction against the smear campaigns launched against them.