Letter From Activist Angela Davis for HDP MP Güven on Hunger Strike

Click to read the article in Turkish

Angela Yvonne Davis, an academic and rights defender from the US, and an iconic figure of the political prisoners' movement, has penned a letter demanding the release of Leyla Güven, a Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) MP who has been on a hunger strike for the last 70 days.

Davis, who was part of a hunger strike in 1970 to protest prison conditions when she herself was in prison, said, "We should now follow the example and leadership of Ms. Güven in protesting the isolation of Mr. Öcalan" in the open letter she sent to the New York Times.

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Here is the full text of the letter:

"She is offering her life in protest"

"Leyla Güven, a deputy of the Peoples' Democratic Party in Turkey, has been on an indefinite hunger strike for the last two months.

"Having dedicated her political efforts over the years to the struggle against the Turkish state's illegal military invasions and occupations of Kurdish regions and against Turkey's continuing human rights abuses, she now offers her life in protest of the isolation of Abdullah Öcalan, leader of the Kurdistan Workers' Party, and other Kurdish political prisoners.

"Ms. Güven is a major inspiration to people throughout the world who believe in peace, justice and liberation. I join all those who support her and stand in condemnation of the repressive conditions of Mr. Öcalan's imprisonment.

"Like Ms. Güven, thousands of leaders and representatives of the Peoples' Democratic Party and the Democratic Regions Party are behind bars. The largest umbrella women's movement of Turkey, the Free Women's Congress, founded in Kurdistan, was forcibly dissolved and many of its activists have been imprisoned. And those who have spoken out against the indiscriminate killing of thousands of Kurdish people by the Turkish Army since breakdown of the peace process in 2015 have been criminalized in multiple ways.

"We should now follow the example and leadership of Ms. Güven in protesting the isolation of Mr. Öcalan, who is recognized as the chief negotiator representing the Kurds in the peace talks with Turkey, and who has declared that the fight for women's equality is central to the revolutionary process. As other imprisoned political figures have been released upon election to Parliament, so, too, should Ms. Güven be freed.

"Those of us here in the United States who have protested the expansion of the prison-industrial complex have been emboldened over the years by the courageous actions of Kurdish political prisoners — especially by the women who have resisted American-type prisons in Turkey."

Angela Y. Davis
Oakland, Calif.

(PT/VK)