Ümit Günger: “Our movement is a family in which all beauties, virtues, values, traditions and heroism are found together…”
Our comrade Umit Gunger was born the son of a Turkish Sunni family on July 13, 1972 in Savsat, Artvin Province (in north-eastern Turkey). He went to primary school in his village, in Zonguldak/Devrek he attended middle school, and he went to high school as a boarder at Kabatas High School for Boys.
In 1989 he started studying to be a physics teacher at the Ataturk Teaching Faculty of Marmara University. He came in contact with our movement and in 1990 he got to know members of DEV-GENC (Revolutionary Youth). Kazim Gulbag who is also a martyr in the Great Resistance played a part in acquainting him with our movement – in a foreign country, Kazim would also set himself on fire. Umit explained why he joined DEV-GENC despite the wide choice of other political groups that he had encountered:
“In the university there was DEV-GENC, which worked in a serious manner, showed self-sacrifice and sincerity and was accommodating. I considered it the most sincere with regard to the struggle. So I also became a member of DEV-GENC“.
DEV-GENC is the dignity of this country. It stands for the resistance and the struggle against imperialism and fascist and has deep roots among the people.
In his activity in the democratic struggle of youth, he was imprisoned for a short time at the end of 1990.
After his release he went to DEV-GENC again. In July 1991 he began to work in the illegal sphere. After he was active in various units of DEV-GENC, he became a fighter in the militia of DEV-GENC in April 1992 and then joined the Armed Revolutionary Units (SDB). Now he could put into practice the people’s longing for justice. On April 23 he was detained and imprisoned, after his comrades fell on April 1 in Kiziltoprak. Under torture he showed resistance worthy of the revolutionary movement and defeated the torturers, maintaining his dignity. While in prison, too, he took on various reponsibilities and always looked death in the face for the Party and the revolution.
As he said in the curriculum vitae he gave our movement, for him the Party symbolised „the only hope of our people, the only force which could bring about revolution in Anatolia“. Our comrade, who thought his life aimless and empty before he encountered our movement, said:
“I came to know what life meant in the ranks of our movement. The most beautiful years of my life are those in which I got to know the movement and took part in the struggle. Our movement is a family in which all beauties, virtues, values, traditions and heroism are found together. I am proud to be a fighter in this family. “
Our comrade, who was always in the ranks of the resistance, was already a fighter in the 1996 Death Fast, as part of the First Team, while he was in Umraniye Prison. On November 30, 2003 he again began the test of hunger, joining the 9th Death Fast Team, frustrating the enemy’s hopes for an end to the Great Resistance and announcing once more that this resistance can never be broken.
He became immortal on March 31, showing that it is not a matter of “falling down” but of getting up again.
