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Nicolas Garriga and Angela Charlton for The Associated Press
December 26, 2022 at 18:13
Members of France’s Kurdish community and others staged a silent march to honor the three people killed in a shooting at a Kurdish cultural center in Paris that prosecutors say was racially motivated.
Turkey summoned the French ambassador on Monday over what Kurdish militants called “black propaganda” following the shooting.
Some carried banners of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in Paris, or suggested Turkey was involved in the shooting.
A 69-year-old Frenchman was charged on Monday with racially motivated murder and a violation of arms regulations in connection with Friday’s shooting, the Paris prosecutor’s office said.
The suspect told investigators his intention was to kill immigrants or foreigners before killing himself, according to prosecutors, and said he had a “pathological” hatred of non-European foreigners.
He briefly received psychiatric treatment but was released back into regular police custody and appeared before an investigating judge on Monday.
The suspect has not been officially named, but French media identified him as William K.
The shooting shocked and outraged France’s Kurdish community, which organized a silent march on Monday.
Demonstrators marched from the site of Friday’s shooting to the spot where three Kurdish female militants were found shot dead in 2013.
“Every day we ask ourselves when will someone shoot us again. Ten years ago we were attacked in the center of Paris, and 10 years later we were attacked again,” said Dagan Dogan, a 22-year-old Kurd ( Dagan Dogan at Monday’s march.
“Why is nothing being done to protect us?”
The solemn procession ended peacefully.
Skirmishes broke out in the neighborhood where the killings took place on Friday and again on Saturday during a largely peaceful Kurdish-led demonstration.
Prosecutors said the suspect’s shooting had an apparent racist motive.
Anti-racism activists and left-wing politicians have linked it to an atmosphere of online hate speech and anti-immigrant, xenophobic rhetoric from figures on the far right.
The French government has reported that crimes and abuses related to race or religion have increased in recent years.
French authorities described Friday’s attack as an isolated incident, but some Kurdish militants in Paris saw it as politically motivated.
Turkey summoned French ambassador Hervé Magro on Monday to express unease over the Kurdish militant group’s so-called black propaganda against Turkey in the wake of the attack, Turkey’s state-run Anadolu Agency reported.
Anadolu reported that Turkey “hopes France will proceed with caution on this matter and not allow the (banned PKK) terrorist group to advance its sneaky agenda”.
Since 1984, the PKK has waged an armed separatist insurgency against Turkish state independence, which has recently evolved into demanding greater autonomy.
The conflict has killed tens of thousands of people and displaced many, with large numbers of Kurds and so-called PKK supporters migrating to European countries.
Turkish forces are fighting Kurdish militants affiliated with the PKK in southeastern Turkey and northern Iraq, and have recently launched a series of strikes against Syrian Kurdish militant targets in northern Syria.
Turkey, the United States and the European Union consider the PKK a terrorist organization, but Turkey has accused some European countries of giving leniency to so-called PKK members.
This frustration is the main reason Turkey continues to delay Sweden and Finland joining NATO.
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