Month: August 2022
Taharrush in Vienna: Arab gang rapists receive sex therapy
One of the Arab asylum seekers who chased two Upper Austrian women in the Favoriten district of Vienna to their flat and sexually harassed them stood before the Vienna Regional Court today. The Algerian (17) was sentenced to eight months imprisonment – two of them suspended – and has to undergo sex therapy.
The circumstances of the crime were so gruesome that even the police spokesperson spoke of “unprecedented proportions”. Immediately after two young Upper Austrian women (19, 21) got off the train at Keplerplatz underground station at the end of June, they were harassed and surrounded by eight Arab migrants. One of the men, the now convicted Algerian (17) tried to assert himself against his companions – among them a Moroccan asylum seeker (22) – and is said to have repeatedly said: “Leave her, the girl belongs to me”.
The two young women did not manage to free themselves from the men’s encirclement and were massively groped on the buttocks, between the legs and in the breast area. At least two of the migrants even made it to the flat of the 18-year-old girlfriend who was celebrating her birthday. The women only managed to lure the violent Algerian and his companions out of the flat by a trick. The Algerian then became angry and kicked the door of the girls’ flat. When the girls called the police, the asylum seeker and his friends fled.
The asylum seeker received eight months imprisonment, two of which were on probation, for sexual harassment, trespassing, damage to property and other offences. As he has been in pre-trial detention since the beginning of July, he will already be released from custody in the coming days. He accepted the sentence. Without a statement by the public prosecutor’s office, the guilty verdict is not yet legally binding.
Following his imprisonment, the convicted man will be given probation assistance. He will also receive sex and anti-violence therapy at a non-profit association in Vienna. It is not known whether his conviction will change anything in his asylum procedure, which is still open.
https://exxpress.at/migranten-belaestigten-maedchen-19-21-massiv-acht-monate-haft-fuer-algerier-17/
France: Call for referendum on voting rights for foreigners in municipal elections
In an op-ed this week, a RN presidential candidate wants a constitutional bill on immigrant voting rights tabled by Macronist MP Sacha Houlié to be put to a vote, seeing it as an opportunity to open up a wider debate on immigration.
According to him, granting the right to vote to non-European foreigners in municipal elections would be “an unhoped-for gift to all the ethnic separatists, at a time when assimilation and integration no longer work”, and “would inevitably lead to a multiplication of the clientelist and separatist practices that we are already seeing in what are modestly called the ‘lost territories of the Republic’”, especially in the Ile-de-France.
Jordan Bardella spoke of “Islamic republics in miniature”, the constitution of which he had denounced by highlighting the town of Trappes, run by Ali Rabeh, close to the France insoumise party: These remarks had moreover earned him an indictment in February 2022.
Using the same reasoning, the RN leader said he worried about a multiplication of such territories: “Tomorrow, how many Trappes, how many Roubaix, how many Sarcelles, if the right to vote for non-European foreigners in local elections was approved?” Jordan Bardella also sees in this “sudden manoeuvre” by a member of the majority, the new proof of the “dangerous links between Renaissance […] and the far-left group Nupes”, as several personalities belonging to the left-wing coalition have announced their support for Sacha Houlié’s proposal.
More generally, the proposal seems to him “in complete opposition to the principles of the French Republic”, which linked citizenship to nationality: civil and political rights are, according to Jordan Bardella, associated “with sharing a common culture and identity”.
Therefore, he continued, “it is not enough to pay taxes or to live in a place to become a citizen: it takes much more than that”. According to him, Sacha Houlié’s approach only reflects a policy of “meticulous dislocation” of the Republic led by Emmanuel Macron, who is threatening this time to “dispossess the French of the last exclusive right they still hold”.
Firmly opposed to the bill, the RN presidential candidate nevertheless invited the majority and the government to go “to the end of the process” by organising a referendum on the subject, which would allow for a much broader debate on the reform of the nationality code.
According to him, “the record figures for naturalisations, which go hand in hand with the record figures for immigration into our country, bear witness to too much laxity in the delivery of French nationality”, which leads to the integration into the French electorate of “individuals who do not master our codes and do not share our culture”.
Such a debate would also make it possible to address the issue of the right of citizenship, as well as the subject of “national priority”, in order to cut off “the suction pumps of immigration”.
To be adopted, the bill tabled by Sacha Houlié would have to go through a referendum because of its constitutional nature, provided for by Article 89 of the Constitution on the initiative of the President of the Republic.
Swedish election surprise? Polling shows conservative Sweden Democrats set to become country’s second-biggest party
The Sweden Democrats, known for their conservative stance against mass immigration, are expected to score 21.5 percent of the vote and become the second-largest party in Sweden, according to the latest survey from state broadcaster SVT/Novus, which has started daily surveys that will run right up until the election.
According to the Nyheter Idag news outlet, this result would put the party 4 percentage points above its result in the 2018 election.
The Sweden Democrats have celebrated the news, and pointed out to Swedes that early voting has already started.
“By a large margin, we are now Sweden’s second-largest party according to SVT/Novus. Early voting has started, so just go and vote for us already today!” the party wrote on its official Twitter account.
The Sweden Democrats (SD) have long campaigned against mass immigration, and their growing popularity has led some of the more mainstream parties to move further to the right on immigration in order to stop SD from getting stronger. Nevertheless, migrant crime in Sweden, including murder and sexual violence, has skyrocketed, leading the country to be labeled the “most dangerous nation” in Europe by the German press. Polling also shows the majority of Swedes want to reduce mass immigration. However, other issues are weighing on Swedes, such as inflation, a stuttering economy, and sky-high housing prices.
At the same time, the Moderates only managed to scrape together 17.4 percent in the survey, which is 2.4 percentage points lower than the party’s last election results.
The survey is also not particularly cheerful reading for the ruling Social Democrats, who would score half a percent less than the party’s historically poor election results in 2018.
The polling data shows, however, that both the Green Party and the Left Party may end up above their previous election results, while the Liberals and the Center Party would perform worse.
Overall, the red-green parties showed a marginal advantage against the blue-yellow parties, with 49.6 percent against 49.3.
Other polls have also shown SD becoming the second-biggest party, but by a smaller margin.
What is it about left-wing environmental wackos and glue?
By Monica Showalter
What is it about leftists and glue?
The protest crazies from the left’s environmental front seem attracted to it, the way moths glom to incandescent light bulbs.
Here’s their latest outrage, according to the National Catholic Reporter:
ROME — Italian environmental activists staged a second museum protest in as many months, gluing their hands Thursday to the base of one of the Vatican Museums’ most important ancient sculptures, the Laocoon.
The statue wasn’t damaged, said the environmental group Last Generation. Vatican gendarmes removed the three protesters and they were processed at an Italian police station. It wasn’t clear if Vatican criminal prosecutors would eventually take up the case since they have jurisdiction in Vatican City.
The protesters are demanding the Italian government increase its solar and wind power and stop exploring for natural gas and reopening old coal mines in Italy. They affixed a banner to the statue’s base reading “No gas, no coal.”
Who the heck cares? These people elect all the leftists they can, meaning that everyone in power over there is all-in on their extremist greenie environmental agenda.
What they’re doing in this case, though, is worth a word.
They glued their hands to an absolutely ancient and beautiful statue, one so rare and advanced in its artistry it gives one pause and wonder about the beauties of the ancient world. It was one of just three of its kind in the Vatican’s collection, certainly one of the most valuable treasures there, and an important element to preserve within all the world’s heritage.
The unkempt environmental wackos didn’t notice the value of the thing — they just said they targeted it because it was a rendering of Laocoon, the ancient priest who warned the Trojans not to accept the Trojan horse gift from the Greeks they were at war with, as it was a ruse to let the Greek army within the walled fortress of Troy — which happened.
They couldn’t paint a picture of Laocoon themselves on some old newspaper and stamp their hands on some finger paints to “glue” themselves to that to get their message out?
No, they had to attack and very likely vandalize something that belongs to all the world’s people to treasure and cherish, something that has been lovingly taken care of by the museum staff in order to make sure all can marvel at it, and frankly isn’t theirs to grub up and damage.
Their claim that they didn’t damage the artwork with their stupid glue stunt leaves one with arched eyebrows, given that all kinds of crazed protestors claim they never damaged things.
Way back in 2014, Greenpeace environmental wackos attended a conference in Peru and decided to take their protest to the ancient Nazca lines in the Peruvian desert, the ancient mysterious drawings on the desert floor that were magnificently created by ancient peoples, and which were extremely fragile, as well as irreplaceable, stomping all over the delicatedly preserved area in their filthy tennis shoes. According to Gizmodo:
The environmental activists wanted to send a message to government officials from around with world who are attending a climate change conference in Lima this week. So they headed to the Nazca Desert, one of the most famous and archaeologically significant sites in Peru, to lay down a bunch of yellow banners that spelled out: “TIME FOR CHANGE! THE FUTURE IS RENEWABLE! GREENPEACE.”
The message is practically on top of the hummingbird geoglyph, which is now surrounded by their footprints. And the irony is thick. The future may be renewable, but these fragile, ancient drawings are not.
“This has been done without any respect for our laws,” Peru’s deputy minister for culture Luis Jaime Castillo told the press, calling Greenpeace’s actions “thoughtless, insensitive, illegal, irresponsible and absolutely pre-meditated.” He explained further: “It was done in the middle of the night. They went ahead and stepped on our hummingbird, and looking at the pictures we can see there’s very severe damage. Nobody can go on these lines without permission—not even the president of Peru!”
Like the statue wackos in Rome, they first claimed they did no environmental damage. Afterwards, when the photos came out showing their crummy footprints all over the ancient preserved and otherwise pristine desert floor, they “apologized,” which was a lot of crap, because the damage was done.
The Washington Post has an amazing laundry list of other environmental groups who’ve performed similar stunts, often with glue:
Many similar recent protests have also involved paintings and sculptures in Europe. In July, activists from the same group glued themselves to a glass frame protecting Sandro Botticelli’s ‘Primavera’ painting in Florence before security guards ripped their hands free. A video of the incident garnered Last Generation nearly 35,000 views on Instagram, making it one of their more popular posts.
Earlier that month, activists covered John Constable’s painting “The Hay Wain” at London’s National Gallery with a reimagined, apocalyptic vision of the English countryside. The activists, who also glued themselves to the frame, called for an end to new oil and gas licenses and urged art institutions to join them in the resistance.
Also in July, climate protesters glued themselves to the frame of a 500-year-old painting of the Last Supper at London’s Royal Academy of Arts. They spray-painted “No new oil” on the wall underneath the artwork.
They all claim they did no damage, but that’s something the curators should be saying, not them.
What we have here is the ancient artistic heritage of the world now becoming a backdrop and glue target for any and every ill-considered environmental cause out there, as if the attention should no longer be on the artwork itself, but on these clowns.
It’s disgusting in the extreme, and the NCR notes that in the Florence case, the clowns were barely punished:
Last month, protesters glued their hands to the glass window protecting Sandro Botticelli’s painting “Spring” in the Uffizi Galleries in Florence. In that case, they were detained and ordered to stay out of Florence for three years, Italian media said.
Art is a fragile and non-renewable thing, quite unlike these proliferating activists, and for that matter, the earth itself. What we have here is hostage-taking by scum who wouldn’t know art if it was right there glued to their grubby hands. That they keep targeting priceless masterpieces that can’t be replaced is a sure sign that their aims are for ill. Conserve the earth? They can’t even conserve irreplaceable art. In reality, these glue acts demonstrate their hatred of humanity at work here, in the name of “saving the earth.” We have long known that environmental wackos have had a problem with the mere existence of people.
One day one of them is going to destroy something big, and the world will be the poorer for it.
A million Ukrainians fled to Germany
Since February 24, when the military operation in their country began, 971 063 Ukrainians have fled to Germany and been registered there.
German daily Die Welt reported on the figures by citing the Federal Ministry of the Interior led by Nancy Faeser (SPD).
At least 73 percent of adults are women. Military-age Ukrainian men are banned from leaving their country because they are expected to serve in the army. The proportion of children and young people who have come to Germany is 36 percent.
However, it is apparently unclear how many war refugees are actually still in Germany. “A significant number may have already traveled to other EU countries and also returned to Ukraine,” the newspaper quoted a spokesman for the Ministry of the Interior as saying.
According to the United Nations refugee agency, around 6,6 million people have fled Ukraine since the beginning of the war. Some 15 percent of them went to Germany. The inflow has been declining sharply for several weeks and is even below the level of before the war broke out.
https://freewestmedia.com/2022/08/25/a-million-ukrainians-fled-to-germany/
Violent Crime Rocks Sweden Ahead of Elections
Sweden will hold general elections on September 11, 2022. At the same time, the country is rocked by a wave of violent crime that is unprecedented in modern Scandinavian history.
For the first time, crime tops the list of voters’ most important concerns in the run-up to the elections. “It’s going to be a very unique type of Swedish election with a very unusual issue at the top of the agenda,” Henrik Ekengren Oscarsson, professor of political science at Gothenburg University, told newspaper Dagens Nyheter. Forty-one percent of those surveyed said that law and order are the most important issues in society, as well as the most important political issues.
Patrik Öhberg, political scientist at the SOM Institute, states that “This is the first election campaign in modern times where it’s so high up on the agenda that all parties, whether they want to or not, have to discuss the issue.” This could benefit the Moderate Party, the Christian Democrats, or the Sweden Democrats. On the other side of the political spectrum, it could be detrimental to the Left Party, the Greens, and the ruling Social Democrats.
The Social Democratic Party has headed the Swedish government since 2014. During these eight years, crime has continued growing to intolerable levels nationwide. Sweden has in recent years suffered attacks involving bombs, hand grenades or other explosive devices on a weekly basis, sometimes several times a week.
In November 2021, Prime Minister Stefan Löfven stepped down as party leader and PM, and Magdalena Andersson became Sweden’s first female prime minister. In April 2022, several Swedish cities experienced violent riots and attacks against the police by Muslims when anti-Islamic activist Rasmus Paludan tried to burn copies of the Koran. Andersson then admitted that a lack of integration had contributed to gang violence, saying that there are “strong forces that are ready to go to great lengths to harm our society.”
“Segregation has been allowed to go so far that Sweden now has parallel societies,” Andersson said according to Aftonbladet. “We live in the same country but in completely different realities… Integration has been too poor while we have had large-scale migration. Society has also been too weak.”
Others, after having allowed these problems to grow largely unchecked for decades, have belatedly come to the same conclusion. Ulf Kristersson, leader of the liberal-conservative Moderate Party, in August 2022 co-authored a column which admitted that “Sweden has lost control over crime. While the violence is getting worse, the perpetrators are getting younger.”
Unfortunately, every single party represented in the Swedish Parliament (Riksdag) has contributed to the current problems, with the right-wing Sweden Democrats being a partial exception.
Even mainstream media outlets such as the BBC admit that Sweden has one of the highest rates of gun killings in Europe. An official Swedish government report published in 2021 stated that each year, four in every million inhabitants in Sweden die in shootings. The European average is 1.6 people per million inhabitants. Statistics reveal that 85% of suspects involved in fatal shootings in Sweden are either born abroad or come from an immigrant background. Recently, bombings and shootings have spread outside the main cities. After a spate of shootings in the smaller city of Örebro, the local police chief said that they now not only had more gangs, but that they had also become more violent. “Where maybe 10 years ago they gave someone a beating, they then switched to shooting each other in the legs,” Mattias Forssten told Reuters. “Now they shoot each other in the head.”
On August 19, a man was killed and a woman was sent to the hospital with serious wounds after a shooting incident in Malmö, Sweden’s third-largest city. The attacktook place inside Emporia, a major shopping mall. According to the police, the murdered man had known ties to a criminal gang. The wounded woman, however, appears to have been an innocent bystander. The perpetrator fired many shots on a busy afternoon inside one of the country’s largest shopping malls. He could easily have wounded or killed many other people, even unintentionally.
A 15-year-old boy was arrested and admitted to the murder in Malmö. Unfortunately, he is far from unique. Of the more than 8,200 people the Swedish police counted as being members of criminal gangs by late 2021, almost 15% were under the age of 18. Some gangs recruit teenagers specifically. Under the Swedish legal system, they can expect more lenient sentences due to their young age and may even be able to avoid spending any time in jail. Prisons in Sweden are already overcrowded.
While confronted by a massive crime wave, the Swedish police force is overwhelmed and understaffed. A disturbing number of murders are never solved, while many lesser crimes go nearly unpunished.
Sweden has in just two generations gone from being one of the safest countries in the world to being one of the most dangerous countries in Europe. During the same time, mass immigration has dramatically altered Sweden’s population. 1.2 million of those eligible to vote in the elections in September 2022 were born outside Sweden — about 200,000 more foreigners than in the previous election, in 2018. Nearly one in four first-time voters aged 18-21 was either born abroad or has two parents born abroad. In central Malmö, almost every second person eligible to vote for the first time has a foreign background.
Muslim immigrants in Sweden, as in other European countries, tend overwhelmingly to vote for the Social Democrats or other socialist or left-wing parties. However, they have now become so numerous and self-confident that they also create their own political parties. Mikail Yüksel, a Turkish-born Muslim, heads Partiet Nyans, which has a following in cities such as Malmö. Yüksel has argued that an artwork by the late Swedish artist Lars Vilks should be burned because it allegedly represents Islamophobia.
Basem Mahmoud is an imam operating in the heavily Muslim-dominated area of Rosengård in Malmö. He has called Jews “the offspring of pigs and apes,” said he was “only quoting the Koran,” and is looking forward to “the great battle” when all non-Muslims will be forced to submit themselves to Muslims. He has also defended the brutal murder of the French teacher Samuel Paty in 2020, who was beheaded by a Chechen Muslim after teaching students a class on freedom of expression.
In a sermon in February 2022, Mahmoud went on the attack against Swedish schools and social services and stated that Muslims are taking over the country. “Sweden is ours,” he said. ” It is ours, whether they [Swedes] like it or not. In ten to fifteen years, it is ours.”
Sweden has both imported and exported Jihadists for years. Some Muslims after 2014 traveled from Europe to the Middle East to support the self-proclaimed Islamic State, arguably the world’s most brutal terrorist organization. While many of them died there, some of the survivors in recent years returned to Europe. They have directly or indirectly supported brutal terrorist attacks, massacres, beheadings, and slave auctions. Nevertheless, many of them have not faced any real punishment after returning to Sweden. Some local municipalities even offeredthem free driving licenses and housing grants in an attempt to reintegrate these hardened Jihadists into Swedish society.
In early 2022, a man was charged with threatening the police after he hung what looked like an Islamic State flag from his balcony in the Broby, a town of about 3,000 people in southern Sweden. He told the police that he would behead them, but later claimed that they had a personal vendetta against him.
Norberg, an old mining community in central Sweden, has roughly 4,500 inhabitants. In April 2022, a man in his 40s who is believed to be from Afghanistan was arrested there for raping and attempting to murder a woman by pushing her down an old mine shaft. The man had come to Sweden with the migrant wave in 2015 and been denied a residence permit, but had nevertheless remained in the country. He had apparently asked a Swedish woman to marry him. When she refused, he raped her and then pushed her about 20 meters down a mine shaft. When he returned later and discovered that the woman was still alive, he started throwing rocks at her to kill her. By some miracle, the woman survived and, after lying in the abandoned mine for two days, was rescued. The assailant may also have killed his former wife.
In July 2022, a 9-year-old Swedish girl was the victim of a brutal attempted murder at a playground in the town of Skellefteå, in northern Sweden. She was raped and then beaten into a coma. The suspect was an immigrant from Ethiopia. He initially claimed to be 13 years old, but he is probably several years older. He had been granted permanent residency in Sweden merely a week before this attempted murder, despite being described in the local community as a “walking hand grenade.”
Sweden has one of the world’s worst recorded rape rates. In 2018, the state broadcaster SVT revealed that 58% of men convicted in Sweden of rape and attempted rape over the previous five years were born abroad. Some of the most brutal rape cases have involved Muslim or African immigrants.
Black Axe is an international and extremely violent criminal organization with roots in Nigeria. They are one of the many rival criminal gangs in the process of establishing themselves in Sweden. An official police report from 2019 indicated that Stockholm alone has at least 50 different criminal gangs currently operating in the city. They are also getting more aggressive and violent. Scandinavian countries traditionally did not have strong organized crime groups comparable to the mafia found in southern Italy. Now Sweden has dozens of different groups or clans competing against one another for control over the local market of narcotics, protection money or other illegal activities. Some of them have even managed to create a criminal infrastructure, with ties to lawyers or bureaucrats. Nearly all of them have been imported to the country since the 1970s. Many of these criminals have an ethnic background from far more brutal and cynical societies in the Islamic world or Africa. Soft Scandinavian prisons do not deter them.
Unfortunately, such problems are no longer confined only to major cities. They are spreading to smaller towns and even rural areas across Sweden. Kalmar, a relatively small medieval town of historical importance, has experienced multiple deadly gang shootings.
In December 2019, when three masked men robbed a local restaurant in the town of Gislaved, a 60-year old Swedish family man was murdered with a machete .
Swedes who want their families to be safe from violent crime are running out of places to move to — unless they decide to leave their homeland behind entirely, as some are doing already.
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18826/sweden-violent-crime
Mark Steyn questions why young healthy people are dying across the UK
Trudeau’s Canada allows euthanasia for a sick or disabled child, but punishes you if you get his “favorite pronoun” wrong
by Giulio Meotti
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has built his political brand on a caricature of “sensibility”. The Wall Street Journal called him the “Trump woke”, the Economist crowned him a champion of freedom and the Guardian discusses whether Canada is not the “politically correct paradise”.
“Maternal love will change the future of humanity,” a woman told Trudeau at a rally. “We like to say ‘peoplekind’, not ‘mankind’, because it is more inclusive”, Trudeau beat her, unable to give a definition of “woman”.
Trudeau is the most “sensitive” man in the world. He was photographed between “ahlan wa sahlan” (welcome in Arabic) and selfies for the first group of Syrian migrants at the Toronto airport.
Then in a wheelchair, as a sign of solidarity with the disabled.
Then with a native Indian tunic and while he dances a Punjabi song.
Then in a sort of gay nativity alongside a member of parliament from his party, his partner and two daughters manufactured with a rented womb.
The first Trudeau government itself is a postcard of the politically correct: half of the ministers women, two aborigines, three members of the Sikh minority, a disabled person and an Afghan refugee.
And he cries. Trudeau always cries. He cries in the mosque, cries for gays, cries for natives, always cries.
How is it possible then that the country that symbolizes “inclusion”, where laws are passed banning the cutting of cat claws in the name of animal rights, is euthanizing physically and psychiatrically disabled people, as well as those who feel lonely and a little depressed?
A moralistic country is a country in moral amnesia.
“Will future Canadians have to apologize for euthanasia for the disabled?”. The editorial has just been published by the Washington Post, a newspaper certainly not accustomed to culture wars. This week from the Canadian National Post: “Canada is getting comfortable killing the disabled.” Similar stories come out every day. Like euthanasia offered to a veteran suffering from post-traumatic stress.
Between 2016 and 2021, Canadian medical staff administered lethal doses to more than 31,000 people who were usually, but not always, terminally ill. Canada now authorizes euthanasia for psychiatric patients with disabilities, a practice that has led to controversy over abuse in Belgium and the Netherlands.
We are in the same country in which a family man was arrested for refusing to call his transgender daughter with the pronoun he/she requested. You can kill a sick or disabled child, but you can’t get his “favorite pronoun” wrong.
Trudeau himself was the first in the world to introduce “neutral” identity cards with the third gender, “neither male nor female”. Politically correct is schizophrenic. Trudeau had himself photographed with a pink shirt against bullying at school.
But again to seem even more “inclusive”, Trudeau has abandoned the prohibition of the Islamic niqab at the swearing-in ceremonies for citizenship. This in the same country where there is no problem that euthanasia is celebrated even in church.
As the journalist Ezra Levant wrote about Trudeau, he “cannot distinguish Hummus from Hamas”. And that country ends by ignoring why it exists.
Turkey Accuses Sweden, Finland of ‘Supporting Terrorism’, Meanwhile Releases Turkish Hizbullah Terrorists from Prison
Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has once again objected to the demands for NATO membership of Sweden and Finland, saying that Turkey “will not take a positive stance” unless the two countries respect their promises regarding the “fight against terrorism.”
“We maintain a firm position on Finland and Sweden. NATO membership of these two countries will not be approved until the promises made to our country are fulfilled,” Erdoğan said on August 8, according to the Bianet News Agency.
Sweden and Finland formally applied to join NATO in June; it was a decision spurred by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The Turkish government, however, has objected to the membership requests. Turkey has accused the two countries of “tolerating and providing shelter to terrorists.”
The “terrorists” the Turkish government is referring to are the anti-ISIS, secular Kurdish forces in Syria, as well as the actual or supposed supporters of Fethullah Gülen, a Pennsylvania-based Muslim cleric who was for decades Erdoğan’s ally but whom Turkey now claims organized a 2016 coup attempt. The Turkish government now calls the Gülen community, its own former ally, the “Fetullahist Terrorist Organization” (FETÖ).
A trilateral agreement signed between Turkey, Sweden and Finland in June stipulates that Finland and Sweden will not “provide support” for any of these groups.
Erdoğan also alluded at a cross-border military incursion against the Kurdish-controlled areas in northern Syria.
“We will continue our fight against terrorism. Our decision to establish a 30-kilometer secure line along our southern border is permanent,” Erdoğan said. “I hope we will soon complete this security zone by clearing the last areas where the terrorist organization is still in Syria.” The “terrorist organization” Erdoğan targets is the Kurdish People’s Defense Units (YPG) that fought against ISIS in Syria and that is a US ally.
Since 2016, Turkey has carried out four major military campaigns in Syria, two of them — the 2018 “Operation Olive Branch” and the 2019 “Operation Peace Spring” — being against Kurdish-controlled areas. The military invasions have forcibly changed the demographic balance of the regions, driving out Kurds, Yazidis and Christians from their lands.
For more than two months, Erdoğan has been saying that a new military offensive is imminent. If he does invade Syria, the group that will benefit is ISIS.
Meanwhile, as Turkey’s government accuses Sweden and Finland of “supporting terrorists,” convicted Hizbullah terrorists have been released from Turkish prisons. Erdoğan releases the terrorists from prison and in return Hizbullah supporters vote for him. The Erdoğan regime enables Hizbullah just as it enables ISIS and other Islamist groups in Syria.
Since April, the Turkish newspaper Sozcu has been reporting on Hizbullah terrorists who had been imprisoned but then released from prison by Turkish courts.
Turkish Hizbullah is a terrorist organization established in 1978. It has engaged in murder and torture, particularly targeting secular Kurds in southeastern Turkey in the 1990s. Many of Hizbullah’s members in Turkey are Kurdish Islamists. Erdoğan is not targeting those Kurds. He like, ISIS, would like an Islamic state; ethnicity is not a factor, just as it is not a factor for anyone who converts to Islam. The Erdoğan regime is targeting secular Kurds who oppose its tyranny and request equal national rights.
Hizbullah’s leaders were heavily influenced by Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution and reportedly received training in Iran. Turkish Hizbullah’s main effort is to establish an independent Islamic state under strict sharia law in southeastern Turkey.
According to a 2000 report in the Turkish Daily News:
“… the Hizbullah terrorists recently apprehended by the police admitted in their testimonies that they have received military training and all required support in Iran and detailed the names and the descriptions of the Iranian guards who acted on behalf of the Iranian government.”
On April 16, Sozcu reported that Hizbullah terrorists Cihan Yıldız and Mehmet Ali Geçer were released from prison before local elections in 2019. They had been given aggravated life sentences for the murder of nine people, including a Kurdish member of parliament, Mehmet Sincar.
On May 6, Sozcu once again reported that 19 more Hizbullah terrorists were released in 2019. They had been sentenced to aggravated life imprisonment for the murder of 91 people in 129 attacks on behalf of Hizbullah.
On May 16, Sozcu reported that “not a single prisoner remains in jail in the main Hizbullah case!”
“Eighteen Hizbullah terrorists had been convicted for the murder of 165 citizens and the wounding of 85 and sentenced to aggravated life imprisonment. But some were released in 2011 after Article 102 of the CMK [Code of Criminal Procedure], which restricts long detention periods, came into effect. The rest of Hizbullah convicts were released before the local elections of March 1, 2019.”
Cemal Tutar, the head of the military wing of Turkish Hizbullah, who killed 109 people by pulling the trigger himself, was among those released.
“I took part in every level of Hizbullah,” he said in his last defense at court.
“Allah has given us the task to make Islam dominant on earth. I don’t regret anything. We have become a bomb ready to explode in prison. Our patience has run out. We can turn the [prison] into a bloodbath.”
Kemal Gülşen, one of the released terrorists, told the court:
“I did all these actions for Allah, for Islam. If I go out right now, I’ll do it again without blinking an eye. In fact, I have done other actions that were not stated in the indictment and that the prosecutor could not solve. Our war is for salat [the five daily Islamic prayers]. I do not expect justice from you. The decision of this court is political.”
Mahmut Demir, who was released after four dead bodies were found under his house, said in the courtroom:
“I took it as my duty to pledge allegiance to Hizbullah. I joined the organization with great love. I took an oath of allegiance to the community for the dominance of the Qur’an in the whole world. Death is martyrdom for us. We pray five times a day for martyrdom to be granted to us. With Allah’s help, Hizbullah will be victorious. Hizbullah is a school of love.”
Deutsche Welle reported in 2019 that more than a hundred Turkish Hizbullah convicts sentenced to life in prison had already been released. In January, 2011, for instance, Hizbullah’s top executives Edip Gümüş, Cemal Tutar and Hacı Inan, were freed. Gümüş escaped to Iran and assumed the leadership of Turkish Hizbullah worldwide.
A legal Islamist party, Hüda-Par, with ties with Turkish Hizbullah, has been in strategic cooperation with Turkey’s AKP government since the November 1, 2015 elections, according to Dr Mehmet Kurt, author of the book Hizbullah in Turkey: Religion, Violence and Belonging.
According to Kurt, the Hizbullah base, who openly supported the government after the July 15, 2016 attempted coup, took to the streets in the southeastern provinces during protests that the government named the “democracy rallies” [after the coup attempt], Hüda-Par, Kurt reported, and encouraged its supporters to vote for the AKP, thereby turning Hizbullah “into a strategic partner of the government through Hüda-Par in the 2010s.”
Hizbullah-linked media outlets, Kurt noted, gave conditional support to the AKP’s constitutional amendment referendum in 2017: “Those conditions included the release of Hizbullah members from prisons.”
The Turkish government — not exactly known for its support of freedom, human rights or individuals and organizations that advocate equal rights for minorities in the region — is a political ally of the Hizbullah terrorist organization. The Turkish regime should be asked why it is accusing Sweden and Finland of “supporting terrorism” when it, itself, supports it.
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18823/turkey-supporting-terrorists