Speaking to Serkan Demirel from Medya Haber TV on Saturday, Swiss peace activist Elisabeth Decrey Warner, who is recognised worldwide for her peace efforts, expressed dismay at the two-and-a-half year isolation of Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Öcalan, pointing out that isolation is a method of torture.
She said that through the speeches and meetings he had held within his means before he was completely isolated, Öcalan had demonstrated his desire to find peaceful solutions to resolve this conflict instead of getting stuck in an endless war.
Referring to the Turkish government’s attacks on Kurdish-led northern Syria, Warner said that the Turkish government was committing serious crimes against the Kurdish people, violating international law.
Pointing out that Turkey has a clear political plan to occupy the region and describing the European Union’s insistence on keeping the PKK on the ‘terrorist’ list as a political decision lacking equivalence in the realm of international law, Warner emphasised that the primary responsibility for the attacks against Kurdish-led northern Syria lies with the international community and Europe, which remain silent in the face of these unfolding events.
Warner recently took part in an international event in Lausanne entitled “New World Embassy: Kurdistan’ and discussed democratic confederalism as an alternative to the concept of the nation-state under the theme ‘Stateless Democracy’.