PAJK: We promise to take revenge for comrades who died in prison

“We bow respectfully before the memories of our comrades Halil Güneş and Salih Tuğrul, who lost their lives in jail, and our comrade Garibe Gezer, who was the victim of a state murder, and convey our condolences to their families. We promise our people and our comrades in prisons that we will take our vengeance by waging a revolutionary war against the enemy,” the PAJK Coordination said.

The PAJK statement, which emphasized that “the fascist AKP regime and the US, UK and EU countries that ignore the Kurdish issue are responsible for the deaths,” made the following remarks:

“Every day, Kurds are killed and imprisoned as a result of the policies of denial, annihilation and war in the face of the Kurdish question which has remained unresolved for two centuries and continues to this day. As long as the Kurdish question is not addressed, and the Turkish regime remains undemocratic, anyone working to address the problem is subjected to the brutality of the state, as it has in the past, and of the AKP, which represents the state today. Prisons are a political historical reality of Turkey’s nationalist, racist, sexist, fascist Turkish Republic shaped along the lines of the Party of Union and Progress. The Turkish state’s jails are overcrowded with thousands of political prisoners, and more are being added all the time. Prisons that have been converted into death camps demonstrate the stage at which Turkey’s reality has progressed. We should not become accustomed to this horrendous scenario that normalizes deaths.

Political prisoners whose contacts with the outside world are fully restricted and who have been held in harsh and deplorable conditions for years in isolation are left to die without any relevant institution being allowed to intervene.

As in the case of comrade Garibe Gezer, an explicit murder is committed in prison pretending to be suicide.

It is an invitation to death through an usurpation of all types of rights, exposure to torture, brutal practices, and circumstances that allow for the growth of diseases. Gezer, Güneş, and Tuğrul’s martyrdom is a wake-up call to humanity’s conscience. It is a time when all of our people, democratic public opinion, and all relevant institutions and organizations must unite in order to prevent further deaths in the tyrant, fascist regime’s prisons. These explicit murders, which would result in the breakdown of authority in another country, are a picture of horror. We will not accept the normalisation of deaths, and we will not become accustomed to them. The martyrdom of our revolutionary comrades in prisons, who made every sacrifice for the sake of liberation, will be the AKP regime’s downfall.

The genocide policy of the fascist AKP regime, which claims that there is no Kurdish problem, defining it as “terrorism”, has come to an end, as has the denial policy of the United States, England, and the European Union, which do not include more than forty million Kurdish people in global politics.

Under any conditions, our fight to hold tyrants and oppressors accountable will continue. It is our foremost responsibility to raise and spread the campaign, which is led under the motto “Freedom for Rêber APO.” By holding the fascist AKP accountable, we will undoubtedly triumph in our fight to reclaim our imprisoned comrades, all our values, and our honour.”