Kurdish hunger strikers call for justice
- Kurdish MP Leyla Güven stopped eating on 8 November 2018. As the world looks elsewhere, he has overcome the critical barrier of 100 days on hunger strike, and behind him more than 400 Kurds have joined the protest. They have only one request: End of the 20-year isolation of the organization's leader, Abdullah Oçalan. They tell him they won't eat until they do.
The Kurds have begun with heat in 2019. When it’s 40 years since Bobby Sands and nine other Irish hunger strikers lost their lives in jail, politics and activist Leyla Güven has opted for the same way of fighting to end Öçalan’s isolation.
Although her name is not well known in Euskal Herria, this 55-year-old woman has given birth to feminism and the struggle for a Kurdish people. Member of the Free Women's Movement (TJA) and president of the Kurdish nationalist party KCD, which emerged after the illegalizations, sharing the position with another member of the training. He was mayor of the town of Küçükdikili between 2004 and 2009 and of the town of Viransehir until 2014. He was then elected parliamentarian of Turkey on behalf of the left-wing coalition HDP, a difficult place for the Kurds. On 22 January 2018, he was arrested provisionally for criticising the invasion of the Turkish Army into the Kurdish region of Afrin in eastern Syria. The penalty of 31 and a half years in prison for “directing and protecting the terrorist organization” is at stake.
On 17 November he began a hunger strike and, in the face of pressure of international solidarity, was released on 25 January this year, when he served on the 79th day of fasting. In response to the non-compliance with her request, she reported that she continued the protest at her home, where she was a refugee. On day 98 he was taken to the hospital with a severe prognosis, where he refused to be a doctor, according to the Basque Department of Security.
400 people on hunger strike
Under the motto “Leyla Güven’s request is our request”, over 400 people have joined the indefinite hunger strike. The Iraqi young man from South Kurdistan named Nasurr Yaerradz, who started fasting two weeks later, turned to the first 100 days, and the first one made 87 days. This is also very critical. This is a political exiles from North Kurdistan. In addition, the International Peace Delegation, composed of members from various countries, has pointed out that 313 political prisoners, belonging to the PKK and PJAK organizations, have also begun the path taken by Guven in prisons in Kurdistan and Turkey. They have been on hunger strike for over 60 days. Many women’s groups in Kurdistan have also begun a hunger strike, as well as dozens of activists abroad: For example, in France, Wales, Lebanon and Canada.
Abdullah Öçalan received a quick visit from his brother on 12 January thanks to the pressure exerted by the Speak up for Leyla campaign in Barcelona. It was the first visit in two years, linked under extraordinary conditions and outside the current visiting procedure. “The Turkish government wants to break Güven’s resistance. However, Öçalan has not been removed from the current state of isolation. Hunger strikers have evidenced and defeated government plans, spreading their resistance.”
Why Öçalan?
Outside Kurdistan it is sometimes difficult to understand why Kurdish women also give so much centrality to Öçalan, to the point of being prepared to bring him to life. Is this not a contradiction from a feminist point of view? In the article An Open Letter to the Women of the World, Leyla Güven has personally reasoned.
“I am a Kurdish woman. I have developed my awareness of injustice against women thanks to Mr Öcalan. Thanks to their importance in the fight for the liberation of women, millions of women have developed a strong will. We live like an awakening, and I'm one of those women. I learned to live in peace with my gender, to fight for patriarchal thinking and to be a feminist. We learned from Öcalan that only society will be free when women are free. Since then, for years I have fought and will continue to fight for women’s freedom.
Mr Öcalan, whom I owe my awakening, is locked for 20 years in an isolation cell. I started a hunger strike to demand an end to isolation. Millions of Kurds see that our political will is represented by Öcalan. It is an important actor working for the construction of peace in the Middle East and in the world. As a prisoner, they have denied him their rights and freedoms, in violation of national and international law.”
Güven served 100 days of hunger strike on 15 February. On that day, 20 years of the 1999 arrest of Öçala – aka APO – in Kenya took place in a joint operation by the intelligence services of several countries. Initially sentenced to death, he was subsequently sentenced to life imprisonment. On the island of Imrali he was the only prisoner in high security prison for the first ten years. In recent years, no one had managed to get in touch with him. Passionate anti-capitalist, in his books he puts at the center of his books the need to fight patriarchy.
How will the thing end if we put the first dead body on the table? Will the state of Erdogan in Turkey be moved?
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