Early this morning, the German police raided the Kurdish Community Centre in Heilbronn and confiscated a number of private belongings, mobile phones and computers and documents. The police reportedly broke open the doors and searched all the rooms, sometimes without witnesses being present. Around the same time, the flats of the former co-chairpersons of the community centre were also searched by the police.

The Confederation of Kurdistan Societies in Germany (KON-MED), the largest Kurdish institution in Germany, released a statement condemning the raid, defining it as “yet another effort by the police to intimidate Kurdish activists and institutions.”

The KON-MED statement on Thursday said:

“We strongly condemn and denounce the German state’s criminalizing attitude that seeks to suppress the democratic mass institutions and associations which struggle for common life based on respect for laws and an equal and free unity with all societies, cultures and faiths.

The German state’s discriminatory and exclusionary practices directed against the institutions and activists of the Kurdish people, with whom it has been living together for hundreds of years and marching to a common future, harms the entire country and its future.

These political practices that ignore the Kurdish people, take them for unattended and seek to hold them captive have not achieved any results so far, nor will they provide any benefit for anyone in future.

As KON-MED, we strongly condemn the German state’s biased and unfair attitude against the institutions and activists that represent the Kurdish people and their will. Like all other peoples, the Kurds also have the right to lead an equal life secured by laws in German society. Injurious attitudes and policies against these basic rights harm the entire social fabric of the country.

We call on the German state to abandon such wrong policies and biased attitudes that cause harm to harmony, and we state on this occasion that we will continue our legal search for rights.”