Members of the Kurdish diaspora in the United States have written a letter for Czech authorities to release Kurdish leader Salih Muslim from their custody. Muslim was detained on Sunday after police in Prague acted on an Interpol red alert.
Turkey, an Interpol member, announced a $1 million bounty for the former co-chair of the Democratic Union Party (PYD), the ruling Kurdish party in Rojava, northern Syria, and added him to the Interior Ministry’s ‘Red List’ earlier this month.
Below is the full letter dated on Sunday and addressed to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic’s Spokesperson and Director of the Press Department Michaela Lagronova.
Dear Ms. Michaela Lagronova:
We, members of the Kurdish Communities in California express our utmost outrage at the illegal arrest of the prominent Kurdish leader, Mr. Salih Muslim by your police in Prague on February 25. Mr. Muslim is a veteran human rights activist, a leading Kurdish intellectual, and a strategist whose diplomatic endeavors have played a significant role in bringing attention to the ubiquitous threat of ISIS and garnering international support for the war on ISIS and Jihadist forces in Syria. Despite such an undeniable record, you have paradoxically arrested and reechoed the Turkish Kafkaesque charges against him and spoken of "extradition" as if Mr. Muslim was a citizen of Turkey. One often wonders why and how (we hope it is not for the bounty) your Republic has accepted the mere fabrications of the Turkish state, that is notorious for threatening with oppression democratic people and institutions everywhere in the world. This conspiracy is an egregious affirmation and approval of the Turkish enmity towards Kurds who have suffered massacres, mass arrests, Ottoman like abuse, insults, persecutions, imprisonments, assassinations at the hands of Erdogan’s Islamist-fascism in Turkey.
This is not where the Turkish monstrosities stop. It has been more than five week that in Syria Turkish planes, tanks, and artillery and their mercenary army of Jihadists have been terrorizing, shooting, killing, injuring, mutilating innocent children, women, and men burning and destroying villages, orchards, and olive fields of Afrin in retaliation for Kurdish decisive role in defeating ISIS and establishing a popular democracy based on equality and justice. It was only three weeks after the Turkish invasion of Afrin that Turkey in the face of the defeats it had experienced in invading Afrin, turned its wrath against Mr. Muslim and charged him with "sedition" and " breaking the country's unity", a familiar and hollow charge that is leveled against insiders and outsiders on a daily basis.
You have arrested a man that symbolizes a progressive political outlook, a democratic institution, a leading figure in Democratic Union Party (PYD), the same party whose military wings, People's Protection Units (YPG and YPJ) courageously in alliance with Coalition countries like yours, with immense sacrifices defeated ISIS. Mr. Muslim has dearly paid for the war against ISIS as in in 2013 he tragically lost his son, Shravn Muslim, a member of the YPG, People's Protection Units in the fight against al-Qaeda's Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), which the Turkish government has always supported and funded.
We find it preposterous that the Czech Republic, one of the member states of the anti-ISIS coalition has now arrested a key Kurdish figure who indefatigably through his diplomatic efforts, interviews, conference presentations, and sacrifices, advanced the cause of global war on ISIS. We find it scandalous and unscrupulous for the Czech Republic to sell out its ally to the Turkish tyrant for a bounty. We vehemently demand that Mr. Muslim, be released immediately and unconditionally as we hold the Czech State responsible for his safety and security.
Amir Sharifi is President of the Kurdish American Education Society-Los Angeles and a member of the Kurdish Communities in California. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rudaw.
