EC Meeting Papers January 2019

campaign between 2005 and 2006, more than 3.5 million Kurds defied the danger of facing imprisonment and violence, declaring that they view Öcalan as their representative. The international signature campaign for the freedom of Abdullah Öcalan, concluded in 2015, managed to gather an astonishing 10.3 million signatories. Apart from his role as a political leader and negotiator, who has drawn up a roadmap for peace ten years ago, Öcalan is the architect of Democratic Confederalism, a political and social proposal for a life in peoples’ solidarity, radical democracy, women’s liberation and ecology. The Kurdish women’s movement , which is a militant and popular mass movement and one of the most organized voices in the struggle against patriarchy, is indebted to his perspectives on the importance of destroying male domination in the creation of a free life. Next month will mark the twentieth anniversary of his kidnapping in Nairobi, which the Kurdish community refers to as an “international conspiracy”, due to the fact that the coordination between several intelligence services, including the CIA, Mossad, and the Turkish MIT constituted a NATO-led mission. The so-called Mandela Rules are a set of principles adopted by the UN in 2015, including rules against forms of solitary confinement that prevent a person from having 22 hours or more a day without human contact for a period that exceeds 15 consecutive days. In this sense, combined with the violation of his rights to receive his lawyers and family members, as well as the systematic obstruction of communication with the outside world, the isolation imposed on him has torturous dimensions. Legal experts have argued that the Imrali Prison where Öcalan is kept is a place where law and justice are systematically suspended. Over the past weeks, multiple solidarity actions have taken place, both organized at the grassroots as well as within more institutionalized political circles. Close to 200 people are currently on hunger strike in Turkish prisons. In Europe, fifteen Kurdish activists and political figures, including former MP Dilek Öcalan, have begun an indefinite hunger strike in Strasbourg to pressure the European Council’s Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CPT) to fulfil its duties and address their single and basic demand to the institution: to pay a visit to check on the situation of Abdullah Öcalan. International solidarity