The co-chairs are in prison, numerous members have been arrested in recent months, and yet the MEBYA-DER Solidarity Association held its second regular congress today in Amed (tr. Diyarbakir). Numerous politicians from the HDP and DBP, as well as representatives of civil society organizations and members of the women's movement TJA took part in the congress in support of the association of the relatives of martyrs, which has been subject to massive repression.

HDP deputy Remziye Tosun gave a speech at the start of the event in which she pointed out the concentrated attacks on the Kurdish people. Emblematic of the repression and oppression, she said, is the total isolation of Abdullah Öcalan, who is denied any contact with the outside world on the prison island of Imrali. "The Kurdish people are meant to be deprived of the air to breathe," said the politician, who comes from Amed, and cited examples of the cruel actions of the Turkish state, from which even the dead are not exempt: "Mother Taybet's body lay on the street for seven days, murdered Cemile was laid out in a freezer for six days, the bones of Agit Ipek were sent to his mother by parcel. In Afrin, the bodies of fighters have been dug up and the cemetery has been presented as a mass grave of YPG victims. Our cemeteries are being systematically destroyed. All this is a reason for us to fight even more. This is what we promise to the Kurdish people."

Other speeches were given by Berdan Öztürk, co-chair of the civil society association DTK, and by Agit Ipek's mother Halise Aksoy. In addition, a greeting message was read by the imprisoned president of the association, Yüksel Almas.

After the presentation of the activity report, a new board was elected. The co-chairs Şehmus Karadağ and Yüksel Almas, who were arrested in March, were re-elected - despite the repression.

Aid and solidarity association MEBYA-DER

MEBYA-DER is a solidarity association for people who have lost loved ones in the Kurdish liberation struggle, and has been the focus of state repression in Turkey for some time. "Aid and Solidarity Association for People Who Lost Their Relatives in the Cradle of Civilizations" is the full name of the association, which has branches in several Kurdish cities. The Turkish state turns fallen guerrilla fighters into a means of psychological warfare by vandalizing graves and maltreating or mutilating the bodies of the fallen. MEBYA-DER is one of the institutions that directly opposes this policy.