Detained Parliamentary Deputy Speaker Buldan Released

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Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) İstanbul MP and Parliamentary Deputy Speaker Pervin Buldan has been released after having given her statement.

Concerning the charges pressed against her, Buldan said “If those are crimes, I will continue to commit those crimes”.

Being detained in the hotel she was staying in Diyarbakır yesterday (June 12), Buldan was taken to the Diyarbakır Courthouse.

According to a report by dihaber, speaking to the journalists in front of the Diyarbakır Courthouse, Buldan said “I’ve come to Diyarbakır for a meeting that would last two days. I was detained in a police raid launched on the hotel I was staying at”.

Buldan was earlier detained in a house raid in İstanbul on December 23, 2016. On the same day, she was released following her testimony at the Bakırköy Courthouse. Speaking to bianet, Buldan had said that there was a detention warrant to take her forcibly in the case brought against her on the grounds of propagandizing for terror in the speech she delivered in Iğdır province.

About Pervin Buldan

She was born in Hakkâri Province in 1967, and she grew up and went to school there. She graduated from high school and started work as an official in the local government administration department.

In 2001 she founded Yakay-Der, the Association of Solidarity and Assistance for the Families of Missing Persons, to help the families of missing persons in Turkey, of which she is now president. Before this she worked for Mag-Der, an association with similar objectives which was closed down by the Turkish authorities because of alleged irregularities with respect to the Turkish Law of Associations

Yakay-Der grew out of the experience of the ‘Saturday Mothers’, who used civil disobedience to gain publicity and bring attention to the ‘disappearances in custody’ cases. These cases became known to the public in Turkey as well as to the world at large.

In 2005, she was nominated as a candidate by a Swiss women initiative for Nobel Peace Prize.

In July 2007, Buldan stood as an independent candidate in the Turkish parliamentary elections and entered the Turkish Parliament. She is an MP for Iğdır. She was re-elected for a second term in the 12 June 2011 general election. In 2008 an investigation was opened against her for a speech that she made during the Newroz celebrations in Iğdır. In April 2010 she headed a group of MPs who demanded an investigation into the Armenian nuclear power plant at Metsamor, near the Turkish border. In 2013 she paid several visits to Ocalan on Imrali Island as deputy chair of the Peace and Democracy Party (BDP). (EKN/TK)