Graffiti has appeared at flats that have replaced a pub near Reading town centre that was once taken over by squatters.
A block of flats has replaced the Red Lion pub in Southampton Street, situated on the approach to The Oracle roundabout.
Hoardings for the new building contain messages in support of Kurdistan, a nation state for the Kurdish people.
Graffiti states ‘Biji Kurdistan’, a Kurdish phrase that translates to ‘Long Live Kurdistan’, the region that covers the nation states of Türkiye, Syria, Iraq and Iran.
It is occupied by Kurdish people who have no set homeland, with political and militia groups calling for them to have their own nation-state.
The Kurds have significant diaspora communities in Europe.
A call back to the time when the Red Lion was occupied by left-wing, pro-Kurdistan squatters who renamed it ‘Kobani House’.
Graffiti states ‘Kobani House 4 Ever’ about the brief occupation, which took place for around a month before the squatters were served with an eviction notice in December 2019.
The hoardings have also been tagged with the ‘Woman Life Power’ feminist message, which could possibly relate to Women’s Protection Units (the YPJ), an all-female militia fighting in the Syrian Civil War.
The YPJ has been involved in defending people from the radical terror group the Islamic State, which forced its female captives into marriages or sexual slavery.
Another message calls for Abdullah Ocalan to be freed. Mr Ocalan is a founding member of the militant Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), who was captured by the Turkish National Intelligence Organisation in 1999 and has been in detention since then.
He was captured as militant Kurdish groups have engaged in a long-running conflict with the Turkish military, which lasted from 1978 to May this year, with a peace resulting in the PKK being disbanded.
The pub building was completely demolished in September 2021, with construction on the apartments beginning in May 2022.
This was after Reading Borough Council’s planning applications committee approved the replacement project in March 2019.
It has now been replaced with a four-storey block of 11 flats, which do not appear to be on the market yet.
The building contains one studio, eight one-bedroom and two two-bedroom flats.
The Red Lion lasted for hundreds of years prior to its demolition.
According to ‘Abbot Cook to Zero Degrees: an A-Z of Reading’s Pubs and Breweries’ by David Cliffe, John Dearing, and Evelyn Williams, it appears in records as early as 1801.
The pub closed in 2016. Attempts to sell it and retain its use failed.
You can view the approved project by typing reference 181117 into the council’s planning portal.
