2016-11-08
On Friday last week the Turkish interior ministry issued detention orders for 13 Kurdish members of Parliament, resulting in 11 MPs being detained, including Selahattin Demirtas, who has been a guest of this Parliament in the past at an event hosted by my colleague Greg Barber and attended by many, including the President of this place, the Honourable Bruce Atkinson. I understand that the general immunity for prosecution that exists for members of Parliament in Turkey was lifted for pro-Kurdish MPs earlier this year, meaning that one-third of parliamentarians representing the Peoples' Democratic Party in the Turkish Parliament are now held to a different standard to their colleagues.
I would like to take this opportunity to denounce in the strongest terms the unequal treatment of Kurds living in Turkey. They have had their traditional lands taken from them by force, they are prohibited from speaking their own language, they have suffered food embargoes to Kurdish villages by the government regime and they have been subjected to literally thousands of recorded human rights abuses over past decades. I support the right of all people to live in peace and call on the President of Turkey to cease the discrimination of the Kurdish people and their supporters in Turkey.