Thousands attend funeral of Kurds killed in Paris racist shooting

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THOUSANDS attended the funerals in Paris on Tuesday of three Kurds shot dead in a racist attack in December.

The ceremony in Villiers-le-Bel, north of Paris, saw many mourners wrapped in the flags of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and the Kurdish-controlled territory of Rojava in northern Syria.

The huge crowd followed the funeral on giant screens set up in the parking lot, showing the coffins surrounded by wreaths under a portrait of imprisoned PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan.

Mr Ocalan is serving a life sentence on a prison island off Istanbul after he was captured by Turkish agents in Kenya in 1999.

A racist gunman, William Malet, killed two men and a woman in a December 23 attack on the Ahmet Kaya community center in the 10th arrondissement of Paris.

His victims were Abdurrahman Kizil, singer and political refugee Mir Perwer and Emine Kara, leader of the Kurdish Women’s Movement in France.

After his arrest, Mr Malet told investigators he had a pathological hatred for foreigners and wanted to murder migrants, prosecutors said.

The Democratic Council of the Kurds of France described Tuesday’s ceremony as an occasion for those who wish to pay their last respects before the bodies are repatriated to their native soil for burial.

We feel like they are doing everything they can to crush us, whether here or in Turkey, said Celik, a resident who attended the funeral and asked that her last name not be published. For safety reasons.

We were here because it is our duty, it is a battle that our parents fought for many years and that we must continue, she said.

A march was to be held Wednesday in honor of the December victims, on the street where the shooting took place.

Saturday, a great march of the Kurdish community will set off from Paris Gare du Nord.

The march was originally planned to mark the 10th anniversary of the 2013 murder of three Kurdish militants linked to the PKK.

Other attacks have taken place against the Kurdish community in France.

Last April, three men were beaten with iron bars at a Kurdish cultural center in Lyon, eastern France. The attack was blamed on members of the now banned Turkish ultra-nationalist Gray Wolves group.

The PKK, which has waged a nearly four-decade armed struggle for more rights for Turkey’s Kurdish minority, is classified as a terrorist group by Ankara, Europe and the United States.

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