Families with children on hunger strikes against the isolation continue to resist in Gebze and Bakirkoy.

GEBZE

The vigil families of prisoners launched in front of the Gebze Closed Women’s Prison is on day 35.

Families gathered in the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) Gebze District Chapter and headed to the prison in vehicles. The mothers were cut off by the police as they arrived at the prison. They left the vehicles and held their sit-in protest despite the police intervention.

The mothers defied police threats and said, “We are here so our children will live.” The police insulted the mothers and said, “Then your children shouldn’t have been terrorists and gone to prison,” and the mothers responded: “You are the true terrorists.”

The police then attacked the mothers, battered them and forced them into vehicles. They gathered at the HDP Gebze offices again afterwards.

BAKIRKOY

Mothers were to gather in front of the Bakirkoy prison once again today. The families with children on hunger strikes protesting the Imrali isolation gathered by the E-5 highway, supported by Ayfer Kocak from the KESK Istanbul Chapters Platform and other members of the public, to march to the prison. The police cut them off and said the protest is not permitted, telling them to end the protest as they wouldn’t let them through to the prison.

The mothers said they were there to lend their voice to their children, but the police didn’t allow the march, citing a decree by the district governorate.