HPG STATEMENT ON BEYTÜŞŞEBAP MASSACRE

"There is no connection between the recent incident [in Beytüşşebap] and the guerrillas."
~ HPG Headquarters Command.

The Turkish Army Is Responsible for the Beytüşşebap Massacre


To the Press and Public:


On the day before yesterday, in the district of Beytüşşebap, province of Şırnak, twelve persons, including seven Village Guards, died by the strafing of a minibus. For notice, those responsible are the Turkish army and the illegal military organization, JİTEM.

Our freedom movement proclaimed a unilateral ceasefire one year ago on 1 October 2006. The Turkish military increased the intensity of its attacks for this proclamation and used all conceivable dirty methods of warfare.

Within this year, the Turkish army carried out 483 military operations. Chemical weapons and cluster bombs were used, as well as the systematic burning of forests. It came to war crimes before the eyes of the world public.

This war concept, which was intensified after the elections of 22 July, is a result of an agreement between the government party AKP and the military. Previously, it was already announced by military circles that the "extermination of terror" is attainable at the earliest by aiming at the "collaborators". Thus almost the entire society was set as the target. For this reason, after that, the course of action which followed showed that this method was implemented.

The dirty relations between institutions of the state, the army, and the government were uncovered by the the bomb attack on a bookshop in Şemdinli by the resident population. Those caught red-handed again implemented the network of gangs, JİTEM, informers, and the use of terror in Kurdistan, in order to intimidate the population. As strengthened Kontras were used in the form of Hizbullah in the mid-1990s, so today there are more organizations such as JİTEM and TİT.

The purposes of this approach are to isolate the guerrillas and to damage the prestige of the PKK. In Beytüşşebap, Village Guards were deliberately selected as the target of attack in order to break the passivity of these circles and turn them against the Kurdish movement.

In the consciousness of this reality, our HPG guerrillas put an emphasis on attacks against JİTEM in their latest actions. There is no connection between the recent incident [in Beytüşşebap] and the guerrillas. We call upon the public of Turkey to place no faith in this war propaganda which twists the facts. In addition, we continue to request the political parties, human rights associations, and democratic-civil-social organizations to examine the incident, and to find and to call to account its true authors.


HPG Headquarters Command