DEVRIMCI HALK KURTULUS CEPHESI
Date: July 31, 2002 | Statement: 264
In the resistance struggle against the isolation cells of the imperialists and fascists, we have given our 92nd martyr:
Our fallen comrade Semra Basyigit IS OUR RESOLVE TO OPPOSE THE IMPERIALIST POLICIES AND THE OPPRESSION OF FASCISM.
These are days in which, every day and everywhere, our statements are being proved true.
We said that it was not simply the prisoners who were being oppressed and called upon to surrender, we said the F-Type isolation prisons were not just for the prisoners but that the entire country was to be turned into an F-Type prison.
We are seeing and experiencing this now.
Almost everyone sees this now. The expression The whole country is an F-Type prison was being used and will continue to be used by people other than ourselves alone. Isolation is a principal means of countering the resistance of the entire population and of destroying organisations. What distinguishes us, is that in contrast to many other layers, we had the courage to recognise this earlier, and did not simply accept it but expressed it out loud, and, most important, we lived up to what our statements made necessary. What we say, or to put it more precisely, the reality of Turkey, is about resisting, no matter what the cost may be. We are resisting. The prisoners of the Party-Front possess both the resolve and the consciousness for this. In the framework of this resistance they are continuing to write an epic of the resistance war.
Unlike many of the resistance fighters, our comrade Semra Basyigit was not in prison in December 19-22, 2000. When the resistance started, she was not in prison. But she knew, she saw, that the F-Types were not just destined for those who were in jail. She lived up to the requirements of what she saw and what she knew. Outside prison she had taken part in some solidarity actions and then in Bursa she went on hunger strike with a number of relatives and friends of prisoners. Among them was Hulya Simsek, who was to die in the Death Fast. The police attacked two people who joined hunger strikes and Death Fasts out of solidarity. And on January 6, 2001, 10 people were imprisoned, among them Semra Basyigit.
From then on, Semra continued her struggle inside prison. She was a volunteer for the Death Fast and joined the 6th Death Fast Team in Kartal Special Prison. She began the Death Fast on July 28, 2001. She was a living bomb. And look how she exploded! Take another look at the newspapers of February 13. Semra Basyigit was also said to be one of the living bombs of the DHKP-C. When this news was published, she was in Kartal Prison. It was correct.
She was preparing herself for the time when she would explode against tyranny like a bomb. But these feelings, these thoughts were at that point only in her heart and mind. It was also hidden and no information about it could emerge. Because she was in isolation conditions in Kartal, she only learned some days later that she had been described as a living bomb. In a letter that she wrote to one of her comrades, she assessed the situation in the following way: Aren’t we all, the whole people, a living bomb to the tyrants? Can one predict when it will happen? Yesterday a man went mad and murdered his wife and four children. Today people destroy themselves in their own houses. But it will not be like that tomorrow! Tomorrow it must not be like that. The entire people must face up to and confront tyranny. She was a revolutionary. She was well to the front in this march.
About five months after this article was written she tied on the red headband. Now she was a Death Fast resistance fighter and her martyrdom would explode like a bomb against the tyranny and the lies. The pro-system media could make of it whatever it chose. Censorship was breached by means of the red banners which waved at the May Day demonstrations, the red bands on the foreheads of our imprisoned comrades and the 100,000 signatures collected by the families and friends of prisoners *. And there will be more breaches in the censorship. The calculations of Justice Minister Hikmet Sami Turk and the European and American imperialists with regard to the F-Type prisons will be in vain. We are resolute enough to achieve that. Our 24-year-old comrade Semra Basyigit, who held aloft the flag of resistance against imperialism and the oligarchy and ate nothing for 367 days, withstanding every kind of pressure, is the expression of this resolve. It is now quite clear who is behind the F-Type prisons and what the F-Type prisons are for. In our resistance to the F-Types, we also resist the USA, the EU and their institutions: the IMF, the World Bank and NATO. From this standpoint, the resistance to the F-Types is the strongest opposition in our country in the struggle against imperialism and for independence. In the resistance to the F-Type prisons, we are also resisting the tyranny, oppression and bans of fascism, and we are resisting the fascist government, the General Staff and the pro-system parties. And so our resistance in the struggle for rights and freedoms is the most powerful strongpoint of the resistance.
The collaborators who rule this land and their masters have said it quite openly: they are attempting to turn our entire land into an F-Type prison, to continue their wild plunder and exploitation and force hunger and unemployment upon our people.In Pasabahce we have again witnessed the methods used against all who resist, just like the methods used on December 19-22 against the prisoners and in the F-Type cells. We have said: Opposing the F-Type prisons means opposing the IMF! Look at Pasabahce. That shows that opposing the F-Type prisons means also opposing dismissals, privatisation, hunger and misery. The struggle for bread, justice, freedom and democracy is one struggle. We who represent all layers of the people must unite our struggle at all levels, and support the struggle of this or that layer of the people with all the strength at our disposal. However high the price of victory is, its dignity is equally lofty. This dignity belongs to us. It belongs to our people.
Our comrade Semra Basyigit was born on July 27, 1978 in Domanic, Kutahya Province. She went to Uludag University, studying in the medical documentation and secretarial faculty. She joined the revolutionary struggle in the middle of 1996. The 1996 Death Fast was one of the most influential events in this period. For a while she was an active correspondent for the periodical Kurtulus (Liberation). She was imprisoned on February 3, 1998 and was held for a time in prison. After her imprisonment she resumed the struggle. She evaluated her imprisonment as follows: As long as the truth is being defended, some of us will be imprisoned. As it appears, it is now our turn. But it must be clear to everyone that they will silence us neither with imprisonment, nor torture, nor massacres. It is a glaringly obvious fact that there is no difference between being inside or outside prison. So there are people who are resisting, both inside the jails and outside them. People resisting for the sake of victory. If other comrades gave varying assessments of her, they all agreed on her respectful, temperate, strong, mature and modest character. She was one of our young women who grew up with the values of Anatolia and maintained these values. As part of our Front, she built up and strengthened these values along with the values of socialism. Before she herself went on the Death Fast, she said the following about her comrades on the Death Fast: You should see their simplicity, naturalness, beauty and fineness. These are our young women. They cause us to experience such great dignity and pride, can our people have a greater source of strength than them? And she herself was one of them who made this dignity and pride come alive. The young women of Anatolia will take their strength from Semra and those like her who resist according to her example.
Devrimci Halk Kurtulus Cephesi
(Revolutionary People’s Liberation Front)
*The families and friends of prisoners have been collecting signatures to oppose isolation in prisons and have so far collected 100,000 signatures.
2002.07.31
