Article appearing in today's Morning Star describes reasons for Seven Sisters hunger strike protest and mentions tomorrow's rally.
(Morning Star, January 23, 2004, page 5)
TURKEY RIGHTS CAMPAIGN PLANS LONDON RALLY
Human rights campaigners will stage a rally in London tomorrow, where an ongoing hunger strike against the Turkish government's vile treatment of its prisoners enters its second month.
The protesters will read out a statement near Seven Sisters Tube station at the junction of High Road and Seven Sisters Road, Tottenham, at 2pm, where the hunger strike has been going strong since December 22.
The organisers - Turkish group Front for Rights and Freedoms, urged progressive groups and individuals to participate and show solidarity.
The event aims to increase public awareness of the Turkish government's highly oppressive penal policy and to register opposition to it.
The group noted that, in December 2000, the Turkish authorities called in thousands of soldiers and police to march into over 20 prisons and force inmates into individual isolation cells.
This violent incursion - resulting in the death of 28 prisoners - aimed to isolate inmates and make them vulnerable to beatings and intimidation by the guards, campaigners said.
The current protest involves Ayfer Yildiz - whose sister was shot dead by Turkish police while protesting in November 2001 - Ibrahim Yalcin and Ulas Kecis, who remain on hunger strike.
"We support the 107 people who have lost their lives in protest against prison isolation in Turkey," they said.
"We are in solidarity with over 500 prisoners left disabled as a result of forcible feeding to break their hunger strike and with everyone in the world who is resisting state oppression."
A spokesman for the group noted: "State oppression and isolation imprisonment is not confined to Turkey, as we have seen in the case of the Guantanamo detainees in US-occupied Cuba and the Belmarsh detainees in Britain."
TURKEY RIGHTS CAMPAIGN PLANS LONDON RALLY
Human rights campaigners will stage a rally in London tomorrow, where an ongoing hunger strike against the Turkish government's vile treatment of its prisoners enters its second month.
The protesters will read out a statement near Seven Sisters Tube station at the junction of High Road and Seven Sisters Road, Tottenham, at 2pm, where the hunger strike has been going strong since December 22.
The organisers - Turkish group Front for Rights and Freedoms, urged progressive groups and individuals to participate and show solidarity.
The event aims to increase public awareness of the Turkish government's highly oppressive penal policy and to register opposition to it.
The group noted that, in December 2000, the Turkish authorities called in thousands of soldiers and police to march into over 20 prisons and force inmates into individual isolation cells.
This violent incursion - resulting in the death of 28 prisoners - aimed to isolate inmates and make them vulnerable to beatings and intimidation by the guards, campaigners said.
The current protest involves Ayfer Yildiz - whose sister was shot dead by Turkish police while protesting in November 2001 - Ibrahim Yalcin and Ulas Kecis, who remain on hunger strike.
"We support the 107 people who have lost their lives in protest against prison isolation in Turkey," they said.
"We are in solidarity with over 500 prisoners left disabled as a result of forcible feeding to break their hunger strike and with everyone in the world who is resisting state oppression."
A spokesman for the group noted: "State oppression and isolation imprisonment is not confined to Turkey, as we have seen in the case of the Guantanamo detainees in US-occupied Cuba and the Belmarsh detainees in Britain."
