A white march in tribute to three Kurdish activists murdered in Paris in January 2013 began in the French capital on Wednesday, with protesters, mostly women, still reeling from the latest racist killings in late December.
On the night of January 9 to 10, 2013, three militants of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) - Sakine Cansiz, 54, Fidan Dogan, 28 and Leyla Saylemez, 24 - were killed by multiple bullets to the head in the grounds of the Kurdistan Information Center (CIK) located in the 10th arrondissement of Paris.
At the head of the procession of a few hundred people, including many women wearing red carnations, six women with moved and closed faces carry large framed portrait photos of the six Kurds murdered in 2013 and at the end of December.
In the rain, the march began with the laying of three wreaths in tribute to the three victims of December 23.
The alleged perpetrator of this attack, a 69-year-old Frenchman arrested in the process, told investigators that he acted because he was "racist". He was charged with murder and attempted murder on the basis of race, ethnicity, nation or religion and imprisoned.
Regarding the 2013 assassination, the CDK-F - which claims to federate 26 associations of the Kurdish diaspora in France - asks the French authorities to lift the defense secret protecting "information held by the various French intelligence services".
The CDK-F has for years accused the Turkish intelligence service (MIT) and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of being behind this assassination, perpetrated, according to the CDK-F, by an MIT agent.
The investigation in France had pointed to the “involvement” of Turkish agents in this triple assassination but without designating any sponsors.
Turkish media had notably broadcast a document presented as a "mission order" from MIT for Omer Güney. The only suspect, this man of Turkish nationality, arrested in France, died at the end of 2016 in prison a few weeks before the holding of his trial, extinguishing the public action against him.
But in May 2019, a French anti-terrorism judge was asked to resume the investigation into complicity in the assassination. A judicial investigation has been opened for "complicity in assassinations in connection with a terrorist enterprise" and "criminal terrorist association".
MIT officially denied any involvement in January 2014.
At the microphone, in the demonstration, Melike Yasar, representative of the Kurdish women's movement in Europe launched "our response, it will be the continuity of the fight of these women, we will continue the struggle and the dreams of all those who gave their lives ".
