Kurds clash with French police after PKK arrests

Police clashed with Kurds in a town near Paris on Saturday night after the arrest of five people, some of whom officials claim are leading members of Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK). Several hundred Kurds were on the streets of Evry in a further protest on Sunday afternoon.

AFP/Jack Guez

Three of the five people arrested were “important cadres” of the PKK, which is on the European Union’s terrorist list because of its armed struggle for independence from Turkey, according to the Ministry of the Interior.

The arrests were made during two raids, one on a Kurdish cultural centre in Arnouville, the other in Evry. Both towns are on the outskirts of Paris.

They came after a months-long anti-terrorist inquiry, following complaints about extortion to finance “terrorist activities” by the PKK, officials say.

"These arrests at the cultural centre were justified operationally,” Interior Ministry spokesperson Pierre-Henry Brandet told RFI. “There was absolutely no provocation by the police. But the blockage and resistance by certain people meant that at a certain point the police had to use force to get out of the situation."

Clashes between police and demonstrators broke out in both towns when crowds gathered after the arrests. Protesters threw stones at the police, who responded with flashballs and teargas.

Eleven demonstrators and one police officer are reported to have been injured.

Up to 650 Kurds protested at the arrests and the police’s behaviour on Sunday afternoon in Evry.

The Socialist mayor of Gonesse, where the injured demonstrators were treated in hospital, accused the police of overreaction.

The Communist Party, which accused France of using the same methods that the Kurds face in Turkey, named one of the detained as Nedim Seven, a PKK member who it said was denied access to a meeting at the Ntional Assembly last Monday.