Kurdish Asylum Seeker on Hunger Strike in Greece – close to death.

I, Zulkuf Murat Bora, more widely known as Bahoz, was forced to leave Turkey in 1995 due to my political beliefs and the Turkish state’s repression I was facing as a result from my struggle for the rights and liberty of the Kurdish people.
ZULKUF MURAT BORA (BAHOZ)

Bahoz has been on hunger strike since the seventeenth of May. 38 days. The Greek Minister of Public Order promised him political asylum for one year for “humanitarian reasons” – if he gave up his hunger strike and his right to claim asylum. Bahoz refuses this kind of “humanitarian” help from the State and continues his struggle for asylum for political reasons. Since the 19th of June he has stopped taking any sugar or salt in his water. As a result, he is now in the hospital in a very critical condition.

At the same time, another political asylum seeker, Yusuf Temiz is being kept in a detention centre in Greece, and is under the threat of imminent deportation in Turkey, where he faces death penalty.

Refugees and immigrants who protest against this situation have been on hunger strikes many times before. The illegal and barbarous violations of the immigrants rights are multiplying continuously. The deportations of humans that are exiled because of wars, political refugees, with not even examining their applications for the political asylum, political prisoners abandoned in deserted camps in the winter, immigrants murdered by the cops in front of people have become common, everyday scenes…

All over Europe the rights of asylum seekers are being stripped away. Here in the UK, during Refugee Week, hundreds of Zimbabwean political exiles have gone on hunger strike to protest their deportation back to Robert Mugabe’s regime.

Join us tomorrow to protest all inhumane treatment of asylum seekers@ the Greek Consulate, 50 Gogarloch Syke, Edinburgh, EH12 9JB.