EC Meeting Papers January 2019

Help sustain ROAR Magazine

Patreon



Webshop



ROAR is 100% reader-funded.

With their action, the hunger strikers make it clear that their understanding of life is not one of bare living and physical survival. An honorable and self-determined life is only possible with autonomy and freedom. A life under occupation, denial and oppression is not liveable. In the words of Turkish revolutionary Kemal Pir, one of the co-founders of the PKK, who died during the prison resistance in Diyarbakir on the 55th day of his death fast in 1982, this means “loving life so much to be willing to die for it.” In the knowledge that their protest may have fatal consequences, the hundreds of people who are currently resisting with the only means left to them — their bodies — are weaponizing their health to expose the cruelty and merciless face of a state that prefers war-mongering over returning to peace negotiations. Those who believe in a peaceful resolution to this decades-old conflict must raise their voices to stand in solidarity with the hunger strikers and support their demand: end the isolation of Abdullah Öcalan!

Dilar Dirik

Dilar Dirik is an activist of the Kurdish women’s movement and regularly writes on the freedom struggles in Kurdistan for an international audience.