Kurdish refugees Mehmet Bilgeç, Mahmut Güler, Gökhan Doğubey, Welat Kaya, Ramazan Tekmen, Şükrü Öztürk and Murat Şahin started a hunger strike in the Pre-Removal Detention Centre in Xanthi, Greece.

Kurdish refugees made a statement on their action, which tey launched in solidarity with the political prisoners who went on hunger strike in Turkey and North Kurdistan on 27 November to support the international campaign "Freedom for Abdullah Öcalan, a political solution to the Kurdish question". The refugees noted that Kurdish People's Leader Abdullah Öcalan has been kept under severe isolation conditions in İmralı Island for 25 years and that the destruction and denial of the Kurdish people is targeted in the person of Abdullah Öcalan.

Drawing attention to the denial of family and lawyer visits to Öcalan who has not been heard from for 33 months, the statement said: "We, as political refugees who had to seek asylum in Greece as a result of the increasing fascism in Kurdistan and who are detained in Xanthi, condemn the isolation of Mr Abdullah Öcalan and respectfully salute the resistance of all PKK and PAJK prisoners in prisons against isolation."

The Kurdish refugees added that their action, which started on 15 December, will continue until 15 February 2024 in alternating periods.