FEHRIYE IS ON THE 40TH DAY OF A HUNGER
STRIKE
FEHRIYE MUST LIVE, HER LIFE AND HER FREEDOM ARE CONNECTED
On August 16, Fehriye Erdal was released from months of
unjust imprisonment in jail and was placed under house arrest. The authorities
who for months have confronted Fehriye with injustice, illegality and arbitrary
behaviour and who are supposed to keep her current address secret have
given it away twice in the space of 24 hours.
In a political trial, a military court in Turkey has demanded
the death penalty for Fehriye. The sadistic fascist government wants to
get its hands on Fehriye so as to be able to torture and murder her. Fascism
in Turkey is doing everything it can in order to achieve this goal. Politics
in Turkey are founded upon torture and massacres. Threats, extortion, injustice
and oppression are the basis of state policy.
Fehriye has been on hunger strike for exactly 40 days.
To defend her dignity and freedom, and to be able to live, a 23-year-old
woman has been putting her own body and health at risk in order to resist
the political game the Belgian government is playing with her, and to resist
the ongoing illegality and injustice with which she has been confronted.
Her life depends on her security and her security depends on her freedom.
For 40 days, Fehriye has been paying the price of freedom. It is government
officials, especially the Belgian Interior Minister Duquesne, who are taking
away Fehriye’s freedom and creating threats to her life. Grown men have
dressed up in costumes and come together posing as serious statesmen to
work out ways in which a young woman, whom they have neither seen nor come
to know and with whom they have never come into contact, “can be extradited
into the bloody hands of fascism – whether directly, or through a third
country”. The Belgian government wanted to use a secret treaty with Turkey
to extradite Fehriye to Turkey. Nothing came of this, so now they are trying
to achieve this goal by means of a third country.
Not only is this murder, but it also means violating their
own laws. After the decisions reached within the framework of the secret
treaty with Turkey ran into obstacles from the court and the Higher Administrative
Court, threats began to emanate in a more open form from the authorities
in Turkey. Turkey began to threaten Belgium with an economic embargo. Will
Belgium also give way to these threats? Will it violate its own laws once
more because of these threats? Will it sacrifice Fehriye so as to be able
to bow the knee to threats from fascism? Will it wound the national honour
of the Belgian people once more by submitting to these dirty threats? All
this depends on M. Duquesne and the members of the government.
Fehriye wants to live, her life depends on her freedom.
Her freedom is connected with her application for asylum being accepted,
and also connected with the removal of the threat of being sent to a “third
country” which hangs over her like a sword of Damocles.
FEHRIYE MUST LIVE
FREEDOM FOR FEHRIYE
COMMITTEE FOR FREEDOM FOR FEHRIYE