AFP
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NOS News•today, 22:06
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Dutch journalist Fréderike Geerdink is back in the Netherlands after being expelled from the Kurdish Autonomous Region in Iraq yesterday. She wanted to cross the border into Syria there, when she was stopped by the police brought and was taken to the airport in the Iraqi city of Erbil.
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Geerdink landed at Schiphol today at 2 pm, she says. “And an hour later I was back in my hometown of Utrecht. Erbil is not a business or holiday destination, so only a few flights depart. I didn’t want to try flying via Istanbul with Turkish Airlines.”
Geerdink was arrested in Turkey in 2015 on suspicion of spreading propaganda for the PKK, a Kurdish organization that is also on the European Union’s terror list. She was acquitted of this. That same year, she was imprisoned for several days for allegedly being in a restricted area. Then she was evicted.
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I said I wasn’t going to pay for my own deportation
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The Dutch Consul General Hans Akerboom helped Geerdink before her departure. “He offered to come by at the airport to help me and although he didn’t have to, he came anyway. It was already late, about 11 pm. Then he listened to me and helped where he could.”
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Geerdink was ordered by the police to pay for the flight home. “I said that if they wanted to kick me out of the country, they should arrange that themselves and I would not pay for my own deportation. Then Akerboom ensured that I got a ticket.”
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Geerdink emphasizes that in the region where she was arrested, the Kurdistan Region in Iraq, it is becoming increasingly difficult to work as a journalist. “Local journalists are particularly affected by this. There is a lot of corruption and nepotism there. Journalists are imprisoned and persecuted.”
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Not returning
She has not been given a reason for her deportation. “I had previously tweeted about Erdogan’s long arm. By that I didn’t mean that Erdogan personally arranged my deportation, but about the general Turkish influence. The whole region is Turkifying culture, language and politically.”
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Geerdink will not soon return to the area where she was deported, she says. “That’s especially annoying because there I can cross the border to Kurdistan in Syria. And that’s where the really important stories are to be told.”
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