The arrested ATIK directors and activists must be released immediately!

To the People of Britain

On 15 April 2015 in different European countries 11 ATIK activists have been arrested and taken into custody with a synchronised police operation. They had been subject to an investigation permitted by the German Ministry of Justice in 2012. Having been tried in Turkey in the TKP/ML case, having served long prison sentences and conducting activities in Germany in the name of TKP/ML are the charges against some of the activists, who have been arrested in Germany, Greece, France and Switzerland. From the detainees 7 are being kept in solitary confinement in prisons located in Augsburg, Munich, Kempten, Lansthut, Nuremberg and Kaisheim. Even talking to the other inmates in the prisons is prohibited and they are allowed to spend only half an hour out of their cells, on their own. The detainees spend 23.5 hours of the day in their cells of isolation. Family visitors can only be met under the supervision of the police officers, for a very limited time and separated by a glass panel. The meetings with their lawyers happen likewise in closed rooms behind glass separators. The correspondence of the lawyers with their clients is monitored by the police.

The German state makes huge efforts for the ATIK activists detained in Greece, Switzerland and France to be transferred to Germany. Musa Demir was arrested while he was visiting Dr Sinan Aydin in his house on that day despite the fact that Musa Demir officially resides in Austria. Moreover, 2 activists who are detained in Switzerland and France are wanted by Germany even though they do not have residence permits for Germany. The German state wants to try these activists while trembling on the international law.

Despite the fact that the home and work addresses of Müslüm Elma, Dr. Sinan Aydın, Dr. Banu Büyükavcı, Haydar Bern, Erhan Aktürk and Seyit Ali Uğur were known to the authorities, the German police, with a show of force, raided their houses by breaking down the doors and windows and arrested them.

It is clear that these operations have been conducted with cooperation by the Turkish and German states. Sooner or later the public will find out the true reasons of these arrests, which happened as a consequence of a secret deal between the Turkish and German authorities. During the recent years the German state has intensively executed such operations, arrested people and tried them based on the sections 129a and 129b of the German Criminal Code, which deal with “terrorist organisations”!

Those arrested are political people. Many of them had not concealed their political allegiances and had openly declared that they were revolutionaries when they sought political asylum in Germany. Nevertheless the German state has violated the right to organise and the right to political opinion of these people and has resorted to arbitrary arrests. The detainees Müslüm Elma, Mehmet Yeşilçalı, Seyit Ali Uğur and Sami Solmaz had served long prison sentences in Turkey and they are people who had participated at hunger strikes. Due to their illness they were released on compassionate grounds mandated by the Institution of Forensic Medicine in Turkey.

We, the organisations with their signatures below, declare our solidarity with ATIK, an organisation of migrants with a long legacy of struggle in the European countries. We condemn the operations carried out by the German state on 15 April 2015. Isolation in prisons is a crime against humanity. There are many articles in international human rights conventions that solitary confinement is a method of torture. The German state is violating the international conventions by keeping the ATIK activists in solitary confinement.

The isolation has to end now and the detainees must be released immediately.

The signatories:

ATİK (European Confederation of Workers from Turkey), AABK (Confederation of Alevi Associations in Europe) AvEG-KON (European Confederation of Oppressed Migrants), ADHK (European Confederation of Democratic Rights), ADEF (European Federation of Democratic Dersim Associations), DİDF (Federation of Democratic Workers Associations), NAV-DEM (Democratic Social Centre of the Kurds in Germany), ÖDA (Freedom and Solidarity Germany) Yaşanacak Dünya/ Devrimci Proletarya (The World to Live /Revolutionary Proletariat), Mala Gelen Kurdistan (People’s House Kurdistan)