Mr. Speaker, there are few cases of the right to self-determination that are more compelling than that of the Kurdish people. However, there are few peoples whose right to self-determination has been more persistently and pervasively repressed, yet whose tragedy remains engulfed in a deafening silence.
Kurdish political prisoner and Nobel prize nominee, Layla Zana, has come to symbolize a case and cause that should commend itself to parliamentary democracies everywhere and to parliamentarians in this place.
Elected to the Turkish parliament in 1991 as the only Kurdish woman ever to serve in the Turkish parliament with over 80% of the vote of her Turkish constituents, she was arrested, prosecuted, convicted and sentenced in 1994 to 15 years in prison for nothing other than simply expressing support for the idea of self-determination. This criminalization of freedom of expression and association invites universal condemnation.
The Turkish government should undertake all necessary measures to secure the release of all prisoners held for the expression of non-violent opinion, including Layla Zana and three other imprisoned former Kurdish deputies, and put an end to this criminalization of Kurdish identity.