Kurdistan flag raised again on KRG office in Brussels

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – The Kurdistan Regional Government’s (KRG) Representation Office in the Belgian capital of Brussels raised the Kurdistan flag again on its building in a ceremony on Saturday.

Kurds living in Belgium, Netherlands, and Germany attended the ceremony to watch as the Kurdish flag was raised again on the building.

According to Zana Kurda, the Head of the administration at the KRG’s Belgium office, the ceremony was planned “at the request of the Kurdish people living in Europe, and as an act of respect to the Kurdish flag.”

Kurda added that the office would continue to provide services to Kurds living in Europe as usual since its establishment in 2005.  

On Jan. 29, a group of people vandalized the representation office and removed the Kurdish flag on the building. The move was an apparent act of solidarity with protestors in the Kurdistan Region’s Sheladize region who recently demonstrated against Turkish airstrikes on their villages.

On Jan. 23, a Turkish attack on Sheladize killed at least four people with two others still believed to be missing. During protests days later, two people from Sheladize were killed and 16 others wounded after demonstrators stormed a Turkish military base in the region.

Turkey has routinely shelled and bombarded territory well past its border with the Kurdistan Region, claiming it targets members of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), a group fighting a decades-long insurgency with Ankara over Kurdish rights and self-rule.

Editing by Karzan Sulaivany

(Additional reporting by Barzan Hassan)