A vigil has been held in front of the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT) and the Council of Europe building in Strasbourg since 25 June 2012. Every week a different group of activists call on the European institutions to work for the end of isolation and the freedom of Abdullah Öcalan.

This week a group from Nuremberg takes over the protest as it enters week 459. Makbule Elbistan said that Abdullah Öcalan’s birthday on 4 April is the day of the “new birth”: for Kurds. “The freedom of Rêber Apo [Abdullah Öcalan] is also our freedom,” she said, adding that “the key for a solution to the Kurdish question lies on the prison island Imrali. The Turkish state tries to sever the connection between the Kurdish people and their representative, but the Kurdish people have come together around Rêber Apo and have shown that the regime cannot force a life on the Kurds without him."

Elbistan appeals to the European states "not to allow themselves to be made accomplices of the Turkish state in its crimes against humanity" and calls on them to do something about isolation immediately.

Thanks to the vigil, thousands of people have been informed about Öcalan's situation and his ideas in recent years.