On Thursday evening, around 80 people, including students from various universities across London, gathered in front of the Strand Building to protest against violence against the Kurdish community in Syria and the new agreement between independence forces and the Syrian government. Members of the KCL Kurdish Society were also present.
Protesters gathered at 4pm, with around 30 people carrying Kurdish flags alongside those of the People’s Protection Units (YPG), the armed wing of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which has played a central role in defending autonomous areas of northern Syria since the outbreak of the civil war in 2011.
By the end of the rally, at 5pm, the crowd had swelled to approximately 80 protesters. Participants were mostly not affiliated with King’s, although some members of the KCL Kurdish Society were present, along with a few other students.
Speaking to Roar, a student from KCL said, “We’re not here because we want to, but because we have to.”
Demonstrators chanted slogans such as “Viva, viva Kurdistan,” and “Free, free Rojava,” the Kurdish name for the Democratic Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (DAANES).
Participants joined to protest against the imminent threat that Kurdish territories now face, following the announcement of a ceasefire between the new Syrian government and the SDF.
Clashes between the SDF and the Syrian military had erupted in the city of Aleppo in early January, leading to the death of at least 30 people and the displacement of 150,000 civilians.
The agreement, reached after days of intense fighting in northern Syria, will entail the integration of the Syrian Democratic Forces into Damascus’ forces, and has been called the end of the SDF’s de facto control over much of Northern Syria, with academic Taha Ozan declaring the group “officially dead.”
“They want us to completely surrender. We’ll be left with no rights,” a student told Roar, expressing fears of renewed repression of Syria’s Kurdish minority.
Determined, the student continued, “We will never surrender.”
Despite allegations of abuses by forces under his command, Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa recently issued a decree that formally recognises Kurdish as a national language and reinstates Kurds as Syrian citizens. This comes after more than 60 years of systemic discrimination enabled by a 1962 census stripping many Kurds of their Syrian citizenship.
A member of the KCL Kurdish Society told Roar, “I’ve been seeing this since I was born, I can’t remember the last time I said ‘I’m Kurdish’ and someone actually knew where that was.”
According to the student, many members of the Society were covering their faces to avoid being targeted by the Turkish government, which considers the YPG a terrorist organisation.
He asserted that those who covered their faces could risk persecution for affiliation with the YPG if they were to enter Turkish territories. The militant group is currently not listed as a terrorist organisation by the UK government.
Beyond King’s Kurdish student group, the ‘Emergency Protest’ had been advertised through a shared Instagram post by the Kurdish Med Student Association (KMSA), the London School of Economics Kurdish Society and The Kurd Net.
The protest was monitored by several police officers and remained peaceful throughout.
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