Follow along with the video below to see how to install our site as a web app on your home screen.
Note: This feature currently requires accessing the site using the built-in Safari browser.
From last year but this continues today.Berivan, a 15 year old Kurdish girl, was detained this past October at a pro-Kurdish rally in Turkey and charged with shouting slogans and throwing stones. Despite denying these accusations and explaining that she was not part of the rally—but was merely watching out of curiosity on her way to visit an aunt—Berivan was sent to jail for eight years. There are currently hundreds of other Kurdish children in Turkish jails for similarly false accusations and minor offenses.
The United Human Rights Council (UHRC) and several Armenian and Kurdish youth organizations organized on March 24 a demonstration outside the Turkish Consulate in Los Angeles to demand the release of Berivan. In addition to erecting an eight-by-eight makeshift children's cell to represent the unjust jailing of Berivan, demonstrators also released doves into the sky and called for the freeing of the more than 2,600 minors currently in Turkish prisons.
Sisters, Zehra and Canan Kulaksiz, went on hunger strike in 2001 in protest at the conditions under which political prisoners were being held in Turkish prisons. The sisters actions were taken in a show of solidarity with the ongoing prison hunger strikes of the time.
Canan died in April 2001. Zehra eventually died in June 2001.
This news item was first broadcst on April 27th 2001, and covers the background to the prisoners' protest. It reports Canan's funeral, as well as Zehra's continuing fast.
