Kurds and their friends attended the action promoted in Sydney by the Democratic Kurdish Community Center (DKTM) to protest the isolation of Abdullah Öcalan.

The statement made on behalf of the organizers at the protest held in the Town Hall square, emphasized that the isolation of Kurdish people's leader Abdullah Öcalan will never be accepted. Activists said that he should be released.

Drawing attention to the growing concerns after the last visit of the Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT), the Organizing Committee said: “Our leadership has been in isolation for 24 years. No visits to lawyers or family have been granted for 21 months. We do not accept the isolation and we will constantly struggle until the Kurdish leader is free.”

Peter Boyle, a journalist with the Green Left Weekly newspaper, called on the Australian government to put pressure on the Turkish government to end the isolation.

Boyle said: "Mr Abdullah Öcalan, the founding leader of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), has been serving a life sentence in the İmralı Island Prison in Turkey’s northwest since 1999. 

He has been held totally incommunicado since he had a short an interrupted phone call with his brother in March 2021. 

The last in-person visit by his lawyers was in March 2020."

Boyle added: "The European Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT) has the authority to visit the prison independent from Turkey, and meet with Mr Öcalan if they see fit. In September, a CPT delegation visited İmralı but did not meet with Öcalan.

Depriving Mr Öcalan any contact with the outside world constitutes cruel and unusual punishment, which is banned by both Turkey’s Law on Execution of Penalties and the UN Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners. 

Extended isolation is also recognised as a form of torture. The United Nations has deemed it torture to hold prisoners for more than 15 days without meaningful human contact."

Boyle continued: "The ban on communication with his lawyers violates Öcalan’s right to legal representation, as recognised in both Turkish law and the European Convention on Human Rights.

The Australian government should make the strongest representations to Turkey for an immediate end to this obscene violation of human rights and the rule of law.

It should be campaigning in all international forums for Mr Öcalan’s to be immediately taken out of isolation and allowed visits from lawyers and family.

It should campaign for his release from imprisonment because his release would be a big step towards peace and justice in the Middle East.

Our PM Anthony Albanese was one of many people who during the campaign against South African apartheid called for the freedom of Nelson Mandela as a step towards peace and justice.

Abdullah Öcalan is the Nelson Mandela of the Kurds. He needs to be freed if there is going to be peace and justice!"