A vigil by the Democratic Kurdish Community in Switzerland has been taking place in front of the UN headquarters in Geneva since 25 January 2021. Every Wednesday, activists stage a protest in front of the United Nations building to demand the release of Kurdish people’s leader Abdullah Öcalan. The action is carried out as part of the 'Dem dema azadiye' [Time for Freedom] campaign and directed against the isolation of the Kurdish leader on the Turkish prison island of Imrali, the Turkish occupation attacks on Kurdistan, the massacres committed in Kurdish territories and the silence of the UN.

This week's demonstration, which is held at a tent set up in Nation Square where the UN Office is located, started with a minute of silence in memory of the martyrs of the Kurdistan freedom struggle in the person of Commander Egîd (Mahsum Korkmaz) who led the PKK’s first armed attack against the Turkish army in North Kurdistan on 15 August 1984.

Activists this week protested the treaty signed by the governments of Ankara and Baghdad, which gave the green light for the occupation of Kurdistan.

On behalf of the action committee, Geneva Democratic Kurdish Community Centre (CDK-Ge) Co-Chair İbrahim Yüksel made a speech on the importance of the 15 August Breakthrough.

Stating that a meeting was held between the Turkish state and the Iraqi government at the beginning of the week, Yüksel said that the Baghdad government made this agreement to sell its territory to the Turkish state.

Yüksel criticised the agreement, as well as the KDP administration's partnership in this treaty by ignoring the existence of its own people. “The Kurdish people are no stranger to this treaty, through which the existence of the Kurdish people and Kurdistan is once again wanted to be ignored. Just as the lands of Kurdistan were divided into 4 parts by the imperialist powers with the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923, the gains of the Kurdish people are once again wanted to be taken away with this treaty today.”

Underlining that this treaty was not realised under the monopoly of either the KDP administration, the Iraqi state or the Turkish state, Yüksel said that this treaty was finalised under the control and supervision of the imperialist states in order to protect their own interests.

Calling on the Iraqi state to protect its own territory by renouncing this dirty treaty, Yüksel also called on the KDP administration to return from its treacherous attitude.

Yüksel continued his speech by denouncing the isolation pf Kurdish People's Leader Abdullah Öcalan, who has been held in a state of incommunicado for nearly 4 years, and said, “The imperialist states are responsible for the torture of isolation that our leader is subject to.”

Criticising the insistence of the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT), the UN, the Council of Europe (CoE), the European Union (EU) and human rights institutions to ignore the isolation of Öcalan, Yüksel said: “These institutions and states are the main responsible for the isolation that continues to be implemented under the control of imperialist powers. As the Kurdish people, we will continue to be in action based on the resistance of our Leader and Egîd’s spirit of resistance until his freedom is ensured.”

After the call for participation in the celebration event to be held on Saturday 24 August on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the 15 August Breakthrough, the activists continued the sit-in protest.