The ‘Long March’, which is organised every year to demand the physical freedom of Kurdish People's Leader Abdullah Öcalan, has kicked off. The route of the Long March this year is between the cities of Bielefeld and Duisburg in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW).

The action is taking place as part of the global campaign "Freedom for Abdullah Öcalan and a political solution to the Kurdish question" launched in October last year. The activists will march in different cities every day between 16 September and 20 September in the state of NRW. Kurdish and internationalist activists will take to the streets in Bielefeld, Hamm, Dortmund, Essen and Duisburg, where the action will conclude on 20 September.

The Kurdish and internationalist activists gathered at Hauptbahnhof in Bielefeld today and started the Long March with great enthusiasm.

A press statement about the march pointed out that no news has been received from Kurdish People's Leader Abdullah Öcalan for 43 months, underlining that “Leader Öcalan’s freedom is possible through resistance.”

Speaking on behalf of the participants, Ferhat Mêrdin, member of the Revolutionary Youth Movement (Tevgera Ciwan ên Şoreşger-TCŞ), said: “The international conspiracy has been going on for 25 years. The struggle of Leader Apo [Abdullah Öcalan] and the Freedom Movement and our people has caused the conspiratorial forces to fail to achieve their goals. The USA, Israel and the UK developed the international conspiracy since the struggle of Leader Apo prevented their projects in the Middle East.”

Speaking on behalf of the Movement of Young Fighting Women (Jinên Ciwan ên Têkoşer, TekoJIN), Jiyan Kîrmanşah read a text in German and said that women's resistance would lead Abdullah Öcalan to his physical freedom.

Jiyan Kîrmanşah said, “Leader Apo's creation of the Democratic National Paradigm was the greatest response to the international conspiracy. It has been proven possible for peoples to live together on the basis of free coexistence and this is seen concretely in Rojava today.”

Jiyan Kîrmanşah said that the CPT and the European Union are complicit with their silence and said: “The freedom of the Kurdish people and the people of the region is connected like a rope with the freedom of Leader Apo. In order to prevent the spread of Leader Apo's ideas and philosophy to the world, absolute isolation was imposed on him. This is a political decision. We have no information and no news about Leader Apo. He is being held under severe torture and this is a violation of all human rights. Here too, human rights organisations, the CPT (Committee for the Prevention of Torture), the Council of Europe and other concerned bodies are collaborating in the crime with their silence and are directly responsible for it.”