25 April 2001 Hunger Strike Commemoration Committee: Press Statement Turkish Hunger Strike At the weekend, Canan Kulaksiz, a 19-year-old, became the 12th person to die on Turkish Hunger strike. She refused food for 137 days in an effort to show solidarity and support with the hunger strikers who are protesting against the transfer of prisoners from large wards to the cramped conditions of one to three-inmate cells in F-type prisons. She was not incarcerated, but both her uncle and brother were in prison. About 250 inmates and several of their relatives launched the hunger strikes several months ago. As we embark on the 20th anniversary commemoration of the 1981 Irish hunger strike, which claimed the lives of three INLA and seven IRA volunteers, let us show our solidarity to all political prisoners - those still incarcerated in Irish gaols who have been stripped of their political status because they refused to support the British run Stormont, and those in Turkey, Germany, Spain and elsewhere - who strive each day to obtain the basic human rights most of us take for granted. The Turkish hunger strike, to a certain extent, mirrors the hunger strikes in 1980 and 1981 in Ireland. Like our Volunteers, these Turkish prisoners once held political status, these same prisoners maintained their own organisation and command structures within the prisons, and these same prisoners have now been stripped of the their political status and delegated to isolation cells (F-type cells) - cells intended not only to destroy their political status and prisoner collectives, but meant to demean them and destroy their moral integrity. Thirty prisoners have already been murdered in Turkish prisons by the Turkish state; thousands more have been, and are being, tortured; and, 12 Turkish people have already died on hungerstrike. As we strive to ensure that the world will never forget our brave men and women who embarked on hungerstrike as political protest, let us also make sure that the world is aware that in Turkey at this very moment, a painful disheartening part of history is repeating itself. Tony O Hara International Coordinator [EMAIL PROTECTED] Danielle Ni Dhighe Press Relations Officer [EMAIL PROTECTED] Dawn-Michele Gould Press Relations Officer [EMAIL PROTECTED]
