KCK: Isolation hasn’t ended, demands haven’t been met

ANF, Behdinan, Tuesday 7 May 2019

KCK: “The isolation hasn’t ended, and the demands of the resistance haven’t been met. The lawyers’ visit to Imrali was planned only to ease the domestic and foreign pressure created by the resistance to break the isolation.”

Kurdistan Communities Union (KCK) Executive Council Co-presidency issued a written statement after the meeting Kurdish People’s Leader Abdullah Ocalan had with his lawyers on May 2 was announced to the public and said: “As the Kurdish people and the forces of democracy objected to the isolation, so do the peoples of the world and forces of democracy. The struggle against the isolation has gone beyond the borders of Kurdistan and Turkey and reached an international level. The struggle against the isolation has been assumed by the whole of humanity in the person of Kurdish mothers with white scarves.”

Imrali narrated by Maxine Peake

On the eve of the release of the short film and documentary “Imrali” narrated by Maxine Peake, The Freedom for Ocalan campaign had the opportunity to speak with one of the filmmakers, Jon Spaull about his experiences making this important film.

Jon Spaull was invited to produce the film together with the writer and long-time international election observer John Hunt. Jon has been a filmmaker and photographer for 20 years his work has appeared in film, television, international film festivals and the web. He’s worked in 50 countries with NGO’s, Trade Unions and TV Channels in Ghana and South Africa as well as Community TV in the UK. His photography has also appeared in The Economist, The Guardian, The Observer, The Independent, The Daily and Sunday Telegraph and The Times.

STUC supports Kurdish hunger strikers – report/press release

STUC supports Kurdish hunger strikers – report/press release

From the beginning, and the mention of Welsh Kurdish hunger striker Imam Sis in

Lynn Henderson’s presidential opening speech, the Kurds featured prominently at

this week’s Scottish Trade Union Congress.

An emergency motion, brought by Aberdeen Trades Council, whose secretary, Fiona

Napier, has visited the Kurdish hunger strikers in Strasbourg, mandated the STUC

General Council to show concrete support for the hunger strikers, and their demand

that Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan be allowed his basic human right to visits by

his family and his lawyer, by writing to the Council of Europe (of which Turkey is a

member), the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture, and the UK foreign

Minister, as well as informing trade unionists about the hunger strike and

encouraging supportive actions.

FREEDOM POEMS FOR OCALAN

Writing poetry, in a way, is a quest for freedom

Freedom Poems for Öcalan Spreads V2

Abdullah Ocalan

PEACE IN KURDISTAN

Press release, 4 April 2019

The poems collected in this volume are presented to Abdullah Ocalan on his 70^th birthday on 4 April 2019.

They are each a gesture of solidarity and token of friendship for Ocalan himself and for the Kurdish people from whom he is inseparable.

Each poem is an expression of admiration for the spirit of the Kurds, inspired by their resilience, resistance and belief in the joy of life. The remarkable awakening of the consciousness and political activism of the Kurdish people in recent years has been engendered by the remarkable leadership and writings of Abdullah Ocalan. Despite enduring decades of incarceration removed entirely from the world, his people and denied all human contacts, Ocalan still communicates through his words and as a living example of the essential strength of the Kurdish spirit. He will not and cannot be silenced.

Towards a New International Solidarity

Dr. Thomas Jeffrey Miley

Lecturer of Political Sociology, Cambridge, and Member of the EUTCC Executive Board

Speech Delivered in Brussels at the 15^thAnnual EUTCC Conference on December 6, 2018

Thank you very much.  It is an honor to get the chance to speak here again, I was here last year also speaking, and today on this panel as well, with its very important interventions, with respect to this question of what international solidarity must look like in the 21^stcentury, and I do think that the international campaign of solidarity, particularly with the Freedom for Öcalan campaign, is very important. And it is important that people spread the message of Abdullah Öcalan.  I myself have been committed to doing that.  This book that we have recently published has been part of getting that message out, and I think it is urgent that we do so.

Your Freedom and Mine: Abdullah Öcalan and the Kurdish Question in Erdoğan’s Turkey.

Watch the video of the event here

BOOK LAUNCH, special event marking the release of Your Freedom and Mine: Abdullah Öcalan and the Kurdish Question in Erdoğan’s Turkey. Edited by Dr Thomas Jeffrey Miley and Dr Federico Venturini.

Speakers include: Dimitrios Roussopoulos political activist, ecologist, and publisher; Dr Thomas Jeffrey Miley lecturer of political sociology at the University of Cambridge; Dr Radha D’Souza Reader in law at Westminster University; Julie Ward MEP (TBC); Jonathan Steele veteran journalist and author; Simon Dubbins UNITE international director; Joe Ryan Chair, Westminster Justice and Peace Commission. In addition,Adem Uzun, member of the Executive Council of the Kurdistan National Congress (KNK), will send a video-message.

FREEDOM FOR OCALAN

FREEDOM FOR OCALAN

Freedom for Abdullah Ocalan and the political prisoners in Turkey. Ocalan’s freedom will mark a breakthrough for the democratization of Turkey and peace in Kurdistan.

www.freedomforocalan.org

A UK TRADE UNION CAMPAIGN
4 April 2018 –                       For immediate use

 Birthday Greetings to jailed Kurdish leader Abdullah Öcalan

 The trade union based Freedom for Öcalan Campaign has asked the British Ambassador to Turkey to help them deliver birthday greetings to jailed Kurdish leader Abdullah Öcalan.

SOLIDARITY GREETINGS TO ABDULLH OCALAN

Peace in Kurdistan sends its solidarity greetings to Abdullah Ocalan, the leader of the Kurdish people, on the occasion of his 69th birthday on 4 April 2018.

Abdullah Ocalan has spent too many of his birthdays in confinement, so that his birthday has become just another day like all others: a day that is not his own, whose freedom has been stolen from him.

Normally a birthday is a time to see friends and family. it is a time to share with all those who are closest to you, to celebrate, reminisce and look to the future. It is an occasion for people to come together, for you to learn how much you are respected, appreciated and loved.

Statement to mark the 19th Anniversary of Abdullah Ocalan’s abduction

FREEDOM FOR OCALAN – PEACE IN KURDISTAN
The 15 February 2018 marks another year since Abdullah Ocalan lost his freedom. It is now 19 years since Turkey abducted and detained the Kurdish leader.
Over the intervening years Ocalan has become a living legend; his status and influence have grown considerably despite his imprisonment and isolation.

Reorienting the PKK: Rojava and the Political Thought of Abdullah Öcalan

 

OCT 12  by LSE Middle East Centre

Free

In its 1978 manifesto, the PKK declared the establishment of an independent state to be the most important political goal of any national liberation movement. Twenty years on, the party’s leader Abdullah Öcalan changed this when he developed an ideological framework based on the idea of self-governing, stateless societies as the best way of addressing socioeconomic and sociocultural injustices. In this talk, Joost Jongerden explains this paradigm shift, which reoriented the PKK as well as other Kurdish movements in the Middle East.

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Joost Jongerden is Assistant Professor at the Rural Sociology Group and the Center for Space, Place and Society at Wageningen University in the Netherlands. He is also a Professor at the Asian Platform for Global Sustainability & Transcultural Studies at Kyoto University in Japan.

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