Turkey’s imprisoned politician shows solidarity to Iranians in 4 languages
Turkey’s imprisoned Kurdish politician Selahattin Demirtas has sent a solidarity message to Iranian people.
“I condemn the Iranian state, which is trying to suppress the people's desire for freedom with violence and executions,” former co-chair of pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party (HDP) said via Twitter on Friday.
Posting his message in Turkish, Kurdish, Persian and Azerbaijani languages, Demirtas asked “What violence, what prison, what death could destroy the demand for rights and freedom?”
Halkların özgürlük isteklerini şiddetle, idamla bastırmaya çalışan İran devletini kınıyorum.
— Selahattin Demirtaş (@hdpdemirtas) December 16, 2022
Hangi şiddet, hangi hapis, hangi ölüm hak ve özgürlük isteğini yok edebilmiş ki?
In the aftermath of the suspicious death of the 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, following her arrest for allegedly violating Iran’s hijab law in September, thousands took the streets for the largest anti-government protests in Iran since 2009.
Spreading to as many as 80 cities, women were at the forefront of the demonstrations, waving and burning their headscarves. Iranian authorities escalated a violent crackdown on the protestors, killing hundreds, arresting activists and journalists.
Within the last two weeks, Iran publicly executed two prisoners who were arrested during the protests.
Since the beginning of the unrest in mid-September, Iranian authorities have arrested more than 14,000 people, according to UN human rights experts.
Demirtas who is behind bars in Turkey since 2016 on terrorism charges, despite several court rulings for his immediate release, also has shaved his hair in support of women in Iran in late September.
Masha Amini on Sept.13 was arrested by Iran’s morality police [Gasht-e-Ershad] - a unit enforcing the laws on Islamic dress code in public - for wearing her headscarf too “loosely” and hours after detention, fell into a coma. Three days after hospitalized, Amini died on Sept.16. According to Iranian police, she died due to a heart failure, but her family says she was subjected to torture, suffering a fatal blow to the head.
