Pictures posted on Twitter show Daniel Riazat, Mamodou Malcolm Jallow and Lorena Delgado Varas posing with the flags of the Kurdish organizations PKK, YPG and YPJ in their hands.
All three are members of parliament for the Left Party. Delgado Varas and Malcolm Jallow are also members of the party’s highest body, the V’s party board.
– We are all behind this, says Lorena Delgado Varas to Aftonbladet.
They are also behind the flag of the EU-branded Kurdish Workers’ Party PKK, she says.
– Yes. These are organizations that are resistance movements, that have a democratic organization, a feminist organization, in a context where Turkey is a dictatorship.
Had the support of the party
Delgado Vargas tells Aftonbladet that the three V politicians had the party’s support to carry out the action in Almedalen and refers to the fact that the Left Party has made a “congressional decision that the PKK should not be listed as a terrorist”.
When asked if the action was an attempt to disrupt Sweden’s NATO process, Delgado Vara answered no.
– But of course we do not want Sweden to join NATO. We saw that this would be a problem because within NATO there are dictatorships, pseudo-democratic countries and that they should dictate what we should do and not do is deeply problematic.
Johansson (S): “V should immediately distance itself”
On Tuesday evening, Minister of Justice Morgan Johansson (S) comments on the action. On Twitter he writes that the Left Party’s leadership should “immediately” distance itself from it.
“It is completely unacceptable here. The PKK was branded a terrorist as early as 1984, by Olof Palme’s government. And for good reason. The PKK has many innocent human lives on its conscience. The leadership of the Left Party should immediately distance itself from the action, “he writes.
Foreign Minister Ann Linde (S) has shared Johansson’s comment.
SVT Nyheter has sought the Left Party’s party leader Nooshi Dadgostar and party secretary Hanna Gedin for a comment, without success.