Kurdish refugee asylum campaign

"Dimitris – Dimitris: stop deportations!"

"Dimitris – Dimitris: stop deportations!" was one of the chants of the 10 strong protest lobby outside the Cypriot embassy, today in Stockholm. (Dimitris Christofias is the President of the Parliament in Cyprus and general secretary of AKEL, the ruling party in Cyprus). Another slogan was "Cyprus deports Kurds to their torturers!" and "The way of treating refugees in Cyprus is to hunt them with the police!" The vice president of Rättvisepartiet Socialisterna, Elin Gauffin, made speeches about the struggle that the refugees, especially the Kurdish group, face and the solidarity campaign in Sweden.

For example, the main Kurdish organisation in Sweden, with thousands of members, has a big announcement about the solidarity campaign on their web site (www.kurdiskarf.org). A protest letter was also written by Giannis Konstantis, the very militant union leader for the metro drivers in Stockholm, which has lead strikes and anti-racist protests for a long time. The letter is written in Greek since Giannis Konstantis is originally from Greece.

The eight councilors of Rättvisepartiet Socialisterna have, of course, also signed a protest letter and we are continuing to contact radical MPs from a Cypriot or Kurdish background.

The protest ended with a meeting between Elin Gauffin and Lina Westerlund

of Elevkampanjen (School Student Campaign) and the press officials for the Cypriot embassy, Spyros Karaolides. Karaolides said he sympathised with us and expressed his concerns: he is himself a refugee from the north of Cyprus. He also promised to take our appeals to the Cypriot government.

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