The Tolpuddle Martyrs Festival in southern England is a three-day international event commemorating six farm labourers who played an important role in the formation of trade unions in the UK. The festival began on Friday and includes music and culture as well as political discussion events on trade union struggles and topics such as ecology, unemployment, health, homelessness, racism and migration.

Trade unions from abroad and solidarity groups for Cuba, Palestine and other countries are also taking part in the festival. From the Kurdish movement, the women's organisation Kongra Star and the Kurdish People's Council of Britain were represented. The campaign ‘Freedom for Öcalan and a political solution to the Kurdish question’, launched globally on 10 October 2023, was presented at a stand on the festival grounds and at a separate event.

Ronash Shexo, Kongra Star's European representative, took part in a panel discussion on Palestine and explained her view of the Middle East conflict and its connection to the Kurdish question. Ronash Shexo underlined that Kurdish People's Leader Abdullah Öcalan has an important role in peace in the Middle East and that not only the Palestinian issue but also the Kurdish question is the most important problem in the Middle East. Shexo stated that Kurds have been subjected to intense oppression, massacres and violence, "We need to fight for peace not only in Palestine or Kurdistan but in the whole Middle East. Abdullah Öcalan, the leader of the Kurdish people, has been kept in absolute isolation for more than 40 months without access to his lawyers and family. Come, let's increase the common struggle. Let us unite around the ideas of Abdullah Öcalan. Let us fight together for the peace of Kurdistan and Palestine and fight for Öcalan's freedom so that he can play a role in the peace of the Middle East. On 10 October an international campaign was launched. I invite you to this campaign for peace, democracy and freedom."

A panel discussion was also organised as part of the ‘Freedom for Abdullah Öcalan, a political solution to the Kurdish question’ campaign. Agit Karataş, Foreign Affairs Representative of the Kurdish People's Assembly in Britain, and Türkan Özcan, Co-Chair of the Kurdish People's Assembly, participated in the panel as speakers. Türkan Özcan thanked the British South West Trade Union Congress for hosting the Freedom for Abdullah Öcalan Campaign at the festival this year.

Agit Karataş, Foreign Affairs Representative of the Kurdish People's Assembly in Britain, remarked that the Freedom for Abdullah Öcalan Campaign has been at the centre of the Kurdish political movement as well as a campaign actively led by British trade unions since 2014. Underlining that it is necessary to see the historical dimensions of the Kurdish question in order to understand why freedom for Abdullah Öcalan is important, Karataş said: “At the same time, Öcalan's ideas on peace, democracy and coexistence for the Middle East in particular and the world in general is reciprocated among millions. The best example of this is Rojava."

Karataş pointed out that a people of 40 million has a very bloody history marked by massacres, chemical attacks, assimilation, exile, prison, execution, violence and torture. He continued: “Today, as we speak here, the Kurdish people in Kurdistan are under intense attack by the Turkish state and the Erdoğan regime. With an invasion operation in South Kurdistan, Turkey is deepening violence, instability, conflict and deaths, just like in Syria, Libya and Cyprus. On the other hand, the Kurdish leader Mr Abdullah Öcalan is fighting with his peaceful ideas. In this respect, standing by the Kurdish people and embracing their peaceful leader Abdullah Öcalan is defending humanity, freedom, ecology, women's freedom and equality."

Stating that British intelligence also played a role in delivering Kurdish People's Leader Abdullah Öcalan to Turkey through an international conspiracy, Karataş said: “President Öcalan was taken to Turkey through an international conspiracy. The aim of those who delivered him to Turkey with that conspiracy was to lead the Middle East to a bloody process and to liquidate the Kurdish movement. However, Öcalan, with his Democratic Confederalism paradigm in İmralı island, put forward the ideas of the culture of co-existence and not destroying each other. In this respect, if we expand the ‘Freedom for Öcalan, a Political Solution to the Kurdish Question’ campaign, we will also be supporting the formation of a new negotiation process. Accepting the absolute isolation of a leader of a people in this way is something that neither human rights defenders nor democratic, left, socialist and revolutionary movements can accept.”

Finally, Karataş invited all trade unions to embrace and expand the campaign for the freedom of Abdullah Öcalan.

The festival, which started on 19 July and lasted for 3 days, will end with a rally and march today.

The Kurdish People's Assembly will also join the march of the labourers and call for the freedom of Kurdish People's Leader Abdullah Öcalan.