CARLA KENNEDY,
Madam, - I refer to the comments of Ms. Nesrin Bayazit of the Turkish Embassy (November 30th) on the Kurdish representative Leyla Zana, and wish to remind her that in 1995 and again in 1998 Leyla Zana was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Amnesty International has declared her a prisoner of conscience and along with Human Rights Watch has raised concern about her case.
Mrs Zana's pursuit of democratic change through non-violence has also been honoured by the European Parliament, which unanimously awarded her the 1995 Sakharov Peace Prize.
Mrs Zana was returned to parliament to represent the Kurdish city of Diyarakir by an overwhelming majority in October 1991. In March 1994 she and her colleagues Hatip Dicle, Orhan Dogan, Selim Sadak, all Kurdish members of the parliament, were stripped of their parliamentary immunity and arrested in the parliament building.
Charges of separatism and illegal activities, as outlined by Ms Bayazit, were brought against the four. Expression of Kurdish identity in parliament and even the colour of their clothes were used as evidence against them. In December 1994, Leyla was sentenced to 15 years in prison.
Such charges by the Turkish State that legitimate political and cultural dissent equate to terrorism have commonly been used to silence any opposition to the status quo, and to imprison hundreds of peaceful Kurdish activists, in a country where basic cultural and linguistic rights are brutally denied to Kurds, who make up almost 30 per cent of the population. - Yours, etc.,
CARLA KENNEDY, Glasheen Road, Cork.