Sinn Fein: We stand with the Kurdish hunger strikers

SINN Fein sent a message of solidarity to hundreds of Kurdish hunger strikers on the 185th day of their protest over the treatment of jailed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Öcalan today.

The party’s Foreign Affairs and Defence spokesman John Brady urged the Turkish government to meet the demands of the six-month-long hunger strike which has seen rolling action in hundreds of prisons.

The hunger strikes started in November 2020 on the anniversary of the foundation of the PKK, demanding an end to the isolation of Öcalan and ever-increasing rights violations in prisons. The PKK leader has been held on Imrali island in Turkey’s Marmara Sea since his kidnapping and arrest in 1999.

The protests have spread to hundreds of Turkish prisons, with solidarity actions also taking place in the Makhmour refugee camp in northern Iraq and the Lavrio camp in Greece, where one person has died.

But instead of listening to the requests of the prisoners, authorities have clamped down and held many of those engaging in the protest in isolation to separate them from other inmates.

Mr Brady, who moved the motion in the Dail last week that saw Ireland become the first European Union (EU) member state to condemn Israel’s “de facto annexation of Palestine,” said the action was something familiar to the people of Ireland as a legitimate form of protest.

“Hunger strike is the weaponising of the human body. It is the last weapon to be employed against the oppressor by the powerless, the dispossessed, by those who have been robbed of everything else,” he told the Morning Star.

“Throughout the 20th century Irish patriots were forced at various occasions to resort to hunger strike against the oppression of the British government.

“Most famously in 1981, when 10 republicans died in hunger strike in protest against attempts by the British to criminalise the republican struggle,” the Wicklow parliamentarian said.

“Irish republicans stand with the Kurdish hunger strikers,” Mr Brady said. “We call upon the Turkish government to meet their demands.”