Demonstrators in Geneva have entered their fourth year of protests outside the UN Office, demanding the release of Abdullah Öcalan, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) leader. Mustafa Albunbaş, speaking for the Geneva protest committee during the weekly “Dem dema azadîyê ye” (Time for Freedom) campaign, emphasised the ongoing hunger strikes in Turkish prisons. These strikes, now lasting 25 days, call for Öcalan’s physical freedom.
“We will continue to be the voice of prisoners fasting for Leader Apo’s [Öcalan] physical freedom. We will support the guerrilla resistance fighting for a ‘Free Öcalan, Free Kurdistan’,” Albunbaş stated.
Tuba Yılmaz, Co-President of the Geneva Democratic Kurdish Community Centre (CDK-Ge), condemned the 25-year-long solitary confinement and torture of Öcalan in İmralı, which has been intensified for the past 33 months to the point of total incommunicado. “We have exposed these isolation policies through our four-year-long action in front of the UN, and we will persist until Öcalan’s freedom is secured,” she said.