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Protest
at Turkish Embassy in Dublin
Monday 12th August at 6pm
All Welcome!
The
Turkish Embassy is located at 11 Clyde Road, Ballsbridge,
Dublin 4
(Bus: 7 to Jurys Hotel in Ballsbridge, Clyde Road
is behind the American Embassy. Nearest DART is Lansdowne
Road)
Organised by: Solidarity with Hunger Strikers in Turkey
Semra
Basyigit has become the 92nd martyr of the prison
protests in Turkey and the 52nd person to die on hunger
strike in the campaign against the F-type isolation
prisons. Despite all the recent media publicity about
'reforms' and the abolition of the death penalty in
Turkey the hunger strikes continue, ignored by the
outside world. More information on the background
to the protest can be found at: http://www.geocities.com/turkishhungerstrike
Semra
Basyigit was born on July 27, 1978 in Domanic, Kutahya
Province. She went to Uludag University, studying
in the medical documentation and secretarial faculty.
She joined the revolutionary struggle in the middle
of 1996. The 1996 Death Fast was one of the most influential
events in this period. For a while she was an active
correspondent for the periodical Kurtulus ("Liberation").
She was imprisoned on February 3, 1998 and was held
for a time in prison. After her imprisonment she resumed
the struggle. She evaluated her imprisonment as follows:
"As long as the truth is being defended, some
of us will be imprisoned. As it appears, it is now
our turn. But it must be clear to everyone that they
will silence us neither with imprisonment, nor torture,
nor massacres. It is a glaringly obvious fact that
there is no difference between being inside or outside
prison. So there are people who are resisting, both
inside the jails and outside them. People resisting
for the sake of victory."
Unlike
many of the resistance fighters, Semra Basyigit was
not in prison in December 19-22, 2000, at the time
of the massacre. When the resistance started, she
was not in prison. But she knew, she saw, that the
F-Types were not just destined for those who were
in jail. Outside prison she had taken part in some
solidarity actions and when in Bursa she went on hunger
strike with a number of relatives and friends of prisoners.
Among them was Hulya
Simsek, who was to die in the Death Fast.
On
January 6, 2001, 10 people were imprisoned, among
them Semra Basyigit. From then on, Semra continued
her struggle inside prison. She was a volunteer for
the Death Fast and joined the 6th Death Fast Team
in Kartal Special Prison. She began the Death Fast
on July 28, 2001. She died on July 30th after 367
days on hunger strike.
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