Protests were held outside the Serbian embassy in Strasbourg, France, this week in support of Ecevit Piroğlu, a Kurdish political prisoner on hunger strike under order of extradition from Serbia to Turkey, despite repeated rulings against his forced return by the Belgrade Court of Appeal.
At the French demonstration, Fayik Yagizay, Turkey’s pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Equality and Democracy (DEM) Party Representative for the European Institutions in Strasbourg, spoke with official Serbian representatives to garner information on the status of Piroğlu’s case. Serbia’s actions were not, the Serbian diplomats insisted, in response to a direct request from Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, as has been muted by campaigners.
Serbia’s Deputy Permanent Representative talking to DEM Party’s Fayik Yagizay at the Strasbourg rally
Moreover, an interim decision by the European Court of Human Rights to an appeal lodged by Piroğlu’s lawyers was expected to inform the situation, Serbia’s Deputy Permanent Representative said. Unable to ascertain how long the decision may take, Yagizay pressed the urgency of case in light of the prisoner’s risk to life from the prolonged hunger strike.
Serbian authorities have kept Piroğlu behind bars for three years with his “unlawful” case overturned in the Serbian capital’s court, on condition of being “removed from concrete facts and lacking evidence”.
Calls for his release have reached boiling point now that the political prisoner has been on hunger strike for 16 weeks to date, in protest at his detention. Piroğlu refused medical treatment during his last hospital visit and is at grave risk of fatal organ failure.
Similar demonstrations have also taken place this week in Germany’s Düsseldorf, Amsterdam in the Netherlands and Antwerp, Belgium.
