Mazlum Doğan’s sister: A handful of people have turned into millions

The flame of revolt against torture and surrender ignited by PKK founder member Mazlum Doğan 33 years ago on 21 March 1982 in the notorious Diyarbakır prison has turned into a popular march to freedom.

Only a day before the historic Amed Newroz, Mazlum Doğan’s elder sister Serap Mutlu Doğan told ANF that the Kurdish Freedom Movement, once belittled by the state as “A handful of bandits” had now turned into a movement of millions.

Serap Mutlu Doğan said: “If my brother had seen this day he would have been proud of the Kurdish people,” adding that with the victory in Kobanê the tradition of resistance initiated by Mazlum and his comrades had reached a peak.

Dogan said the resistance launched by her brother against the state policies of denial and destruction of the Kurdish people had now been embraced by millions. She said her brother had been seeking a cause and that he had joined the Kurdish Freedom Movement in order to fight for the freedom of the Kurdish people whose languages and very existence was denied.

‘He succeeded in lighting the fire in the hearts of the Kurdish people’

Doğan said Mazlum and his comrades had waged their hardest struggle in the Diyarbakır prison. She added: “I visited the prison at that time. It was terrible, worse than the dungeons of Saigon.”

Doğan said the state had tried to force the PKK to submit, but had been unable to succeed in that aim. “Some prisoners submitted at that time. In order to prevent this, Mazlum ignited the flame on 21 March, an important date in Mesopotamia and Kurdistan. As well as preventing the policies of forcing submission, at the same time it lit the flame in the hearts of the Kurdish people,” she added.

“I will never forget, one day Mazlum said to me during a visit that I should tell his friends not to submit, and that they should die rather than submit. I didn’t see him again after that. But whenever I’m despondent, I remember those words of his and pull myself together,” said Serap Mutlu Doğan.

‘The Kurdish people have awoken, there is no going back’

Doğan said the Kurdish people had awoken after great sacrifices and that there was now no going back. She said she believed in the struggle, not in the AKP.

She added that no one would be able to prevent the rise of the Kurdish movement, which was used to the manoeuvrings of the state. “The authorities used to say they were: ‘A handful of bandits,’ but now they have turned into a movement of millions. The sacrifices they made for their comrades have become a fundamental principle of comradeship in this movement. The victory in Kobanê is a continuation of this,” she added.‏