GFTU BGCM Minutes 2017

people displaced/made homeless – half a million people! Do we really hear

much about this? No. Despite all this, it is on record that we have been writing

to the governments, to the MPs, lobbying, left, right everywhere and I have got

to say I really do appreciate and we can see there is a huge amount of support

amongst the British public in the UK, but it was very patchy, it is still very

patchy. So we thought how are we going to get all these people together to

organise, to coordinate, to make it more effective, because that is all it needs, it

needs to be effective and we were not being effective. Then thanks to trade

unions like Unite, GMB, GFTU who came on the board, actually making a great

impact, because demanding freedom for Öcalan is really something which

could lead to a political solution, as it did for Nelson Mandela, because he is in

a similar situation, if not stronger position, to solve the Kurdish problem.

So there are two things which I am going to say we could do, please, as a trade

union. We could attend some of your meetings, conferences, to inform what

has been happening in the region in Kurdistan. There is a newly formed

Kurdistan Solidarity Campaign, Doug mentioned it. I worked with a few other

colleagues very hard. We are trying to bring different groups together, trying to

coordinate and make it more effective, so there is a newly formed Kurdistan

Solidarity Campaign which people could join and support and affiliate even as a

trade union movement. As was mentioned, there are other sources of

information available but not in the mainstream media, because this is

controlled by the Government and this is exactly what has been happening.

When we had this half a million people being made homeless, destroying

towns was not just what they did. Do you know what they did? If you go on

Google Maps and look at the map for January 2016 and then go looking in

2017, some of the cities do not exist. What they did is they bombed, they

destroyed and then bulldozed it. I am not exaggerating here. They went in

with a bulldozer and then moved all the remains from that area, because there

were a lot of dead bodies there which were killed, burnt alive.

Theresa May rushed off to see Trump, went to see Erdoğan and signed a £130

million new fighter jet deal. What is this going to be used against? They are

thinking of increasing this even further. So I plea and I say please, we do need

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