Since 25 June 2012, a permanent vigil for the freedom of Abdullah Öcalan has been held in Strasbourg in front of the Council of Europe.

Every week, activists from a different part of Europe take over the vigil. The 25th of June this year marks the tenth anniversary of the vigil for Öcalan's freedom.

For this anniversary, there will be an internationalist vigil to tell the public that Ocalan is the guarantor of peace, freedom and democracy in the Middle East. Every day of his imprisonment of more than twenty years is one day too many for us. Internationalists will take over the vigil from 19 to 26 June.

Program:

During this week, various seminars and workshops will be held on the topics such as Democratic Confederalism, Jineoloji and on the revolution in Kurdistan.

On 23rd June from 1 to 2 p.m., there will be a press conference.

The daily vigil will take place between 8.30 am and 5 pm in front of the Council of Europe.

The address of the Council of Europe is Conseil de l'Europe, 1 avenue de l'Europe, 67000 Strasbourg.

Background

For 23 years, Abdullah Öcalan, the Kurdish political leader, has been held under conditions of almost total isolation on the prison island of Imrali. Öcalan was abducted in 1999 through an international conspiracy and extradited to Turkey. The Turkish court declared a death sentence on 29 June 1999.

It is no coincidence that this was the date, 74 years earlier, of the execution of Kurdish resistance leader Şêx Said, who was sentenced to death in a similar trial. When Turkey dropped the death penalty, Ocalan’s sentence was converted to aggravated life imprisonment.

Since then, he has repeatedly campaigned for a peaceful solution to the Kurdish question and the democratization of Turkey, and has launched corresponding political initiatives. There had been direct talks between representatives of the Turkish state and Öcalan. However, since the AKP government sabotaged all Kurdish peace efforts in early 2015, and fanned a war against the Kurdish population inside and outside Turkey, Öcalan has hardly even been allowed contact with his family or his lawyers. There has been no contact with Öcalan since 25 March 2021.