Support the Turkish Death Fasters, End the Campaign of Isolation

international | rights, freedoms and repression | news report Friday November 05, 2004 23:39 by IRSP - Irish Republican Socialist Party irsp at irsm dot org

End the Campaign of Isolation

Three years ago, on 5 November 2001 the Turkish state murdered four people who had acted in solidarity with prisoners on a death fast to bring an end to isolation of political prisoners within the gaols there. At that time, the struggle had already been ongoing for a year, today, as the protest enters its fifth year, 117 lives have been lost in the fight to oppose isolation in the prisons.

Irish Republican Socialist Party
5 November 2004

IRSP: Support the Turkish Death Fasters, End the Campaign of Isolation

Three years ago, on 5 November 2001 the Turkish state murdered four people who had acted in solidarity with prisoners on a death fast to bring an end to isolation of political prisoners within the gaols there. At that time, the struggle had already been ongoing for a year, today, as the protest enters its fifth year, 117 lives have been lost in the fight to oppose isolation in the prisons.

It was the 20th of October 2000 when the Turkish state decided it would break the will of the political prisoners it held by ending their right to association and introducing a new system of isolation. The prisoners responded with a death fast, which is a less austere form of the hunger strike tactic employed by prisoners in Long Kesh in 1981. After only the 59th day of the death fast, on 19 December 2000, a military assault was launched on the prisoners' compound, resulting in the murder of 28 prisoners, including six women prisoners who were burned alive in their cells.

Following the massacre, the state was able to gain greater isolation of the prisoners, so their supporters on the outside took up the death fast. When that resistance couldn't be broken, the area in the Armutlu district of Istanbul where the protesters resided was attacked. The result was the four deaths whose anniversary we observe today.

Throughout the past four years, the Turkish state has been unable to break the resistance of these political prisoners and their supporters. Despite solitary confinement, torture, arrests, force-feeding of hunger strikers, brutal assaults, and more, the fight continues. Though it is estimated that as many as 600 people have sustained permanent damage to their health and 117 lives have been lost, the struggle continues.

Comrades of the Irish Republican Socialist Party have stayed with the death fasters in Armutlu. The comrades of the death fasters have visited the graves of hunger strike martyrs of the Irish National Liberation Army. We have both attended conferences that drew activists from around the globe to speak out against state isolation of political prisoners. The death fasters in Turkey and their comrades have our deepest solidarity. We call upon all those who believe in social justice, all those who oppose fascism, to join us in supporting Kurdish and Turkish political prisoners in Turkey and fighting against the state campaign of isolation. Only an end to the campaign of isolation will bring to an end the struggle and martyrdom of these revolutionaries.

ENDS