Revolutionary People’s Liberation Front

Date: April 2, 2002; Statement: 250

The 90th martyr in a year and a half’s war and resistance: Meryem Altun sacrificed herself so that her people can live freely and like human beings

Our people are dying; we, the people. For the most heroic among the people, it is the same whether it is in Palestine, in Turkey, in the refugee camps and in the F-Type Nazi camps The Palestinian sacrificial fighters march along, under tyranny, with bombs strapped to their bodies. Surrounded in a building, a Palestinian in his office fights and is martyred…. The sacrificial fighters of our country and in the F-Type prisons are marching along the road to death.

What is it they want? What they want is a very simple thing, without which nothing is possible, without which living is impossible; a free and honourable life. The Sharons and Ecevits want to use death and tyranny to suppress their just and legitimate demands. We have given as the 90th martyr of our Death Fast resistance our comrade Meryem Altun, who was in Umraniye Prison at the time of the December 19-22, 2000 massacre, was then transported to Kartal Special Type Prison, started the Death Fast herself as part of the 5th Death Fast Team on June 3, 2001, and was martyred on March 31, 2002 in Sagmalcilar State Hospital.

We are continuing to die: with bravery, resolve, limitless self-sacrifice, and our ideals! How can human beings die like that? How and why can they SACRIFICE their LIVES?

Those who have a little honour and conscience ask this question. It is also necessary to ask it. Every day, in our country and in every corner of the world, the answers to this question suggest themselves very forcefully. The latest answer is: Palestine.

UNBRIDLED TYRANNY IN EVERY CORNER OF THE WORLD IS WHAT CREATES THIS SELF-SACRIFICE
After all, is Palestine far from us? Are the conditions there so different from our own?

What we see on our TV screens is besieged headquarters with Palestinians inside. Israeli tanks using their shovels to tear down the walls of the headquarters, killing and arresting the Palestinians they have hemmed in on all sides. Then remember what happened in Turkey on December 19-22. There is no difference. On our TV screens we see Palestinians forced to lie down in the streets, stripped and searched and stigmatised. The Zionist murderers do everything in their power to humiliate a people who have fallen into their hands. And now people are brought to the F-Type isolation prisons in Turkey. On that day – December 19 – those who were tortured and wounded by gunshots were shipped off to F-Type prisons. There too, torture awaited them. Strip searches are the least severe of these tortures, you might say, for other tortures go as far as anal rape with truncheons, or being urinated on. we have witnessed and experienced everything the Zionist murderers are now doing to Palestinians.

These are the horrors to which our bodies have been exposed in the prisons. And against such horrors, the Death Fasts have gone on for month after month. What is Sharon saying to Arafat? You may leave your comrades and people and go into exile but the ticket is only one-way… An open attempt at humiliation. They are applying pressure on him to surrender, sell his friends in the struggle and abandon ideals defended for decades. The pressure is basically the same as in the F-Type prisons. We have written the lines above dozens of times: there are only two changes in the sentences; we mention Arafat instead of revolutionary prisoners, Sharon instead of Turkey’s Justice Minister Sami Turk.

Just the same kind of surrender and humiliation is being attempted against the revolutionaries of Turkey in the F-Type prisons. Remember: according to the directives of Sami Turk, before three or five people are to be allowed out into common areas, they must first prove that they are well-behaved and rehabilitated. When you go out to see visitors, your shoes are searched you are strip-searched before you go out to meet your lawyer during roll calls you are supposed to stand at attention Our continuing resistance is resistance to this attempt to humiliate us, to deprive us of our honour, to make us repent, to make us surrender. So long as this pressure to make us surrender continues, then so long will this resistance go on, in various forms. Meryem Altun and those like her are sacrificial fighters; they sacrifice themselves so a free people can live in an independent homeland. They are dying so that those who come after them will see the independence and freedom that they themselves did not live to see.

Horror in Palestine to undermine the terrorist infrastructure

F-Type prisons to undermine the terrorist infrastructure

Slaughter in Afghanistan to undermine the terrorist infrastructure

Sharon attacks the people of Palestine to undermine the terrorist infrastructure, they say The F-Type prisons were built by the oligarchy in Turkey using the same pretext Terror is nurtured and directed from the prisons After the December 19-22 massacre, didn’t the interior minister and General Staff spokesman say it was a major blow to terrorism? Bush used the same excuse for attacking Afghanistan.

Look at what is being done by those who are undermining the sources of terrorism; everywhere the Palestinians live is being turned into Nazi camps, murders follow upon murders, the houses people live in are turned into prisons. On December 19 in Bayrampasa, six women were burned alive The excuse was the same. In Umraniye and Canakkale, prisoners were killed by bullets and gas canisters The excuse was the same. Remember what was shown on TV screens concerning December 19-22; it was only one thousandth of what went on, and it was short selections chosen by the General Staff. But even that was enough to understand the dimensions of the horror. It even told something of how 20,000 bombs were rained down on prisoners who were behind the four walls of their prisons The excuse was the same. Bombs were rained down on the impoverished villages of Afghanistan, tens of thousands of Afghan villagers massacred The excuse was the same. They are stopping the flow of the rivers by talking about terrorism. They suppose that they will be able to stop the flow forever. No, from now on everybody will start to question this vile demagogy. Today, the questioning is beginning in Palestine, it will spread to include our country too. The period in which the F-Types, the ISOLATION cells, the GUANTANAMOS are legitimised by this demagogy will come to an end; because as the terror by the imperialists and their collaborators grows, it will undermine and render ineffective their demagogy. With every day that passes it is becoming more and more obvious that, on the pretext of undermining the sources of terrorism, the imperialists are practising terrorism, and that on the pretext that they are engaging in war against terrorism they are in fact engaging in war against the peoples.

OUR SACRIFICIAL FIGHTERS ARE THE SUMMIT OF PATRIOTISM

Meryem Altun’s family went to England. She had lived in England for seven years. She was part of the struggle there too. But it was different there from the struggle in her country. She rejected the culture of imperialism and its way of life and returned to her country. Not long after returning to her country, she fell into the hands of the torturers. In the house of torture they said to her, You are young, you are beautiful, you are living in England. When you had the chance to live there, why did you come back? They are just using all the young people like you You are just being wasted, and in vain. If you talk to us nicely and confess to what we tell you, we can also be helpful to you, and you can go back to your family Don’t go on struggling in vain. But she said no to them. She put her youth at the service of independence, freedom and socialism for her country and people. In the house of torture she became better acquainted with the system in her country: here is a small part of what she told of her experiences in the torture centre: They said, ‘Strip.’ I did not take my clothes off so I was undressed by force, and they started to spray water on me from high-pressure hoses Later I was put in the hanging room and suspended. They tried to remove my trousers. I wanted to prevent them by swinging my feet at them and shouted at them, ‘You scum!’… They started to beat me and swear at me. Again they sprayed cold water on me and hung me up…. They shoved my head into a bucket of filth. Then they pulled my head out and asked, ‘if that’s OK, shall we continue?’… One after the other, I was hung up, sprayed with cold water, half-drowned and subjected to psychological torture. My outer clothing was soaking and I was trembling. They wanted me to undress and when I didn’t I was undressed by force. They said they would rape me, and I was molested.

THAT HAPPENED IN TURKEY!

That wasn’t the Israeli police, it was the police of the Republic of Turkey.

In this case it wasn’t Sharon’s government, it was the Tansu Cillers and Bulent Ecevits who were responsible. Violence is bound to arise in a country like that. Sacrificial actions are bound to arise. Sacrificial fighters are produced by the conditions that exist on the soil of this land.

Our comrade Meryem Altun said on June 21, 2000, at a meeting of Death Fast Volunteers: “I want to state that I am ready to take on any kind of duty during the resistance. We will win victory, we will win by paying a price.”

She was born on August 18, 1976 in Istanbul (she was registered in Kayseri). Meryem Altun went to Umraniye High School up to the second year. She started to struggle for rights and freedoms when she was in high school. Her older brother Kahraman Altun was a Devrimci Sol(Revolutionary Left) fighter. He was martyred in Izmir in 1991.

At the end of 1991 Meryem joined her family which had gone to work abroad. She spent seven years in England. She was also part of the struggle there. Twice she was detained and spent six months in European prisons. At the end of 1998 she returned to her homeland. She joined an armed unit to fight this tyrannical system. She knew that it was impossible for there to be independence, freedom, a human way of life and enough food for our people under a system authorised by imperialism and the pro-system parties. This is what she wrote: Victory will not be given to us as a present, we will win it, by resisting and paying a price we will achieve victory. And now her name is the name of the price we pay and the victory we will win.

Devrimci Halk Kurtulus Cephesi
(Revolutionary People’s Liberation Front)