To resist pain

“The real courage is defending humanity, peace and solidarity despite all the impossibilities. And the real courage is to have the courage to resist all the pain” writes attorney and a prominent human rights defender Eren Keskin for Yeni Yasam News Letter.

The President said, “If you have enough heart” recently… I mean, he said, “if you have the courage”. It was like he called for an unequal struggle.

Those who have all the power in their hands once again threatened their opponents. The opponents cannot say even one word to defend themselves since there is no free or open space for them.

The real courage is defending humanity, peace and solidarity despite all the impossibilities.

The real courage is to have the courage to resist all the pain.

The relatives of the people who were disappeared under custody and murdered by torture are resisting the pain with such courage and while doing that they face illegalities and pressure. Among one of those families is the family of Rıdvan Karakoç.

I met with Rıdvan in 1994. He was a brilliant human rights defender and a politician. We were about the same age, we believed in the same ideas and were dreaming of the same world. In 1995 he told me that he had been followed for a while. They were trying to kidnap him and make him disappear. So he issued a power of attorney.

“I’ll will call you every day, if I don’t call you one day then you will know that something has happened to me,” he said. And so he called every day. But in the middle of February, the phone calls came to an end. I was scared. His family was also concerned. Since then we have not heard from him.

In an article that I wrote those days, I was sentenced to prison for using the word ‘Kurdistan’ and the sentence was confirmed. I was waiting to go to prison every day.

Later we learned that Rıdvan Karakoç was murdered with torture like Hasan Ocak and was buried in the graves of the unknown people. The people who murdered them even did not inform their families and buried them in the graves of the unknown.

Rıdvan was murdered on 2 March and his body was left in a forest in Beykoz as also happened to Hasan Ocak’s body. The bodies of the deceased were found by villagers. And two of them were unrespectfully buried in that cemetery.

Hasan Ocak’s family coincidentally saw the photographs of Rıdvan Karakoç in the Forensic Medicine records and that is how the family learned about the fate of their son.

While the family was taking the body of their son on 3rd of June, I was already sent to Bayrampaşa Prison. I felt that pain inside me every moment. I was very upset that I could not be with Rıdvan. And unfortunately, the relatives of him and the people who love him still have to resist with that courage since then

They say if you have enough heart, but how much sorrow our hearts have seen so far…