The 19th of July Brigade joins the human shield campaign in Qandil

Since more than one and a half month the campaign “Serhildan” is going on, promoted by the youth organization Gancany Wellatparez (Patriotic Youth) branch of Komalen Ciwan, the umbrella organization of the youth in the Kurdish Freedom Movement in south Kurdistan.

This campaign has been launched because of the constant air strikes from the turkish army under the Qandil mountains and the illegal entrance of the army 30km inside South Kurdistan (Kurdish Regional Goverment in Irak) borders. The aim of the civil campaign is to perform as human shields inside the mountain area to avoid the turkish army to air strike civilians.

A popular sentence says that “Kurds have no friends but the mountains” because of their historical relation with them, as they used them hosting there the different rebellions against the States that had tried to assimilate or exterminate them. The mountains work as the natural frontier for Turkey, Iran and Irak, called as Medya Defense Zone by the Kurdish Freedom Movement, are used as a reference for the different struggles for democracy, freedom and equality in the 4 parts of Kurdistan. While the mountains stay by their side, the struggle will continue.

The 19th of July Brigade demands a no fly zone for all the South Kurdistan, and the appliance of the international legislation in order that the turkish army gets out of all the territory they invaded beside their borders. With our presence in the Medya Defense Zone we want to contribute to the international knowledge of this conflict and to a process of reduction of the tension in the region. This schould help the democratic forces in Kurdistan to get deeper in their essential project of Democratic Autonomy, which contributes to a peace solution and the end of 40 years of armed conflict.