Hunger striker Iba: You step forward, because we won’t step back

Hunger striker Yusuf Iba said, “We won’t stop our protest until we achieve our goals,” as his health deteriorates. Iba called on peoples and institutions to support the resistance.

Yusuf Iba, who went on a hunger strike 101 days ago to protest the isolation imposed upon Kurdish People’s Leader Abdullah Ocalan, continues his protest with determination despite spitting up blood.

Iba called on the public and said, “You step forward, because we won’t step back.”

SPITTING BLOOD AND LOSING CONSCIOUSNESS

Iba has been hospitalized 9 times before for nausea, heart spasms and breathing issues but refused treatment and continued his protest. 2 days ago, he started to spit blood and he lost consciousness.

Iba can’t take in fluids and is unable to walk due to muscle atrophy. He can barely stand with help from a cane and his friends, and no longer goes to the hospital.

Despite efforts by his friends, Iba didn’t want an ambulance to be called. He pointed to the silence and called on the Kurdish people, the public, forces of democracy and NGOs.

“THE RIGHT TIME TO PAY OUR DEBT”

Iba said the following:

“Anywhere we go, we were supposed to spread Leader Apo’s approach to humanity, wisdom, women, ecology and peoples. I, as a young Kurdish man acting on this thinking, started this protest in Canada. As I started, I had made a promise to myself and our people like other friends. Whatever this protest brings, there had to be development towards the end of the isolation against Leader Apo and to ensure his freedom. We arrived to this day by keeping our resistance and hope, thinking of Leader Apo in the toughest times and feeding on his ideology. When we look at the history of Kurdistan and its people, the past is full of pain, attacks and destruction. Think of it, from the ‘Kart-Kurt sounds’, a freedom movement and a leader was born and shook the whole world.

We as Kurdish youth should always concern ourselves with how to pay back this effort and labor at all times. This is the right time to pay back our debt. Whatever we do to be a people, a youth, a women’s movement, a person worthy of Leader Apo won’t be enough. The AKP-MHP gang government, who knows no law and sees it as only a stick to beat people with, showed their disregard for the law by attacking the mothers who went to the Gebze Prison and the streets in Kiziltepe with the most innocent of demands a few days ago. So what is to be done against these barbarians? Of course what we must do is resist. Isn’t it time we respond when the enemy charges at us and to crush the enemy with the strength Leader Apo gives us? If we remain silent today, the phrase ‘Be Serok Jiyan Nabe’ has no meaning. It is time to uphold that phrase, and to support the prisoners. So let us uphold the resistance of the mothers, women of 60 to 70 years who embody Leader Apo’s words ‘We started young, we will prevail young’.

“TAKE ACTION NOW”

“I spat blood several times two days ago, and I couldn’t take any liquids due to my nausea. I can’t stand up on my own due to muscle atrophy, I can only manage with help from friends and a cane. Our people must know this: Even if our blood pours, even if doctors say we have 10 minutes to live, whatever the price may be we won’t stop the protest before we achieve our goals. As we won’t stop the protest until the isolation is broken, you should take action. If you don’t want young people to lose their lives, take action now. You step forward, because we won’t step back. We think about our 7.000 friends in prisons and we are concerned for them. It shouldn’t be a few mothers in front of prisons, it should be hundreds, it should be thousands of people. This is the only way to fight these barbarians. We have a debt to the Leader, who gave us a spirit of innovation and progress that understands humans, embraces science and expresses itself through revolutions, instead of a classical, traditional and regressive one. He thus built the new life.”