Imagine you are the parent of school-age children. You are politically active, raising your voice for social justice. Now imagine that the state wants to take away your kids, accusing you of raising them as terrorists.

Does this sound like the machinations of an authoritarian regime? Unfortunately, this very scenario is taking place in Germany, that supposed bastion of liberal democracy. A Kurdish mother of five children, Zozan G, is in danger of being deprived of custody because she is a longtime activist for Kurdish and democratic rights. Hers is just one of the more recent incidents in the long history of Kurdish persecution in the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG).

Since the militant Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) was banned in 1993, thousands of Kurds and their supporters have been harassed: house searches, bans on political activities, imprisonment, and much more. The German majority tends not to pay attention to this extreme repression, but it intrudes into all areas of Kurdish life.