Police in Berlin raid offices of Kurdish NGOs, seize computers

2018-06-13

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SULAIMANI — In the early morning hours, the offices of the Democratic Kurdish Society Center (NAV-DEM) and the Civaka Azad on Residenzstrasse in Berlin were raided by the German police. At the same time, the private apartments of at least five NAV-DEM Berlin board members were searched.

The police forcibly entered the premises around 0600 CEST (0700 EBL) in the morning and broke the doors of the offices, pointing to a planned December 2017 that had ended up being canceled, as a pretext for the raid. According to the German police and Berlin Prosecutor’s Office that is handling the investigation, the demonstration would have “violated the law on associations”. Following a long search, police confiscated computers from the offices.

Speaking to Firat News Agency (ANF), Civaka Azad executive member Ali Çiçek strongly condemned the approach of the German police.

Describing the raid as an attack on the freedom of thought and expression, Çiçek said that such an approach by the German state indicated support for the Turkish state’s operations against the Kurdish people.

Çiçek stressed that these attacks will not hinder their work and that they would continue to tell the Turkish state’s crimes and Germany’s support to these crimes to the public.

(NRT)