Armed with stones, petrol bombs: Kurdish youth claim mission
FEATURE |
DIYARBAKIR — At the age of 15, Adem knows how to make a petrol bomb and can quickly turn a scarf into a balaclava — that’s the equipment he needs for his own warfare in Turkey’s 26-year Kurdish conflict.
The eighth-grader is one of thousands of Kurdish youths whose violent street protests have become a serious challenge to police, turning urban areas into a battlefield where banks are torched, public property is vandalized and many are injured, and sometimes killed.
“If the police have pepper gas, we have stones and Molotov cocktails,” Adem, clad in school uniform, said confidently in Diyarbakir, the largest city of the mainly Kurdish southeast and a hotbed of ethnic militancy.
“Sometimes you would make your own Molotov and sometimes someone would bring many and distribute them... We would dismantle the pavements, breaking them with a sledgehammer,” he said..... MORE
Source: The Daily Tribune
URL: http://www.tribuneonline.org/commentary/20110521com3.html
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