arch/ive/ief (2000 - 2005)

Greece: Anarchist immigrant on hunger strike


BAHOZ ON HUNGER STRIKE SINCE MAY 17 FOR THE POLITICAL ASYLUM
TEXT IN ENGLISH: COPY-TRANSLATE-CIRCULATE

Why I selected to go on a hunger strike:

To select the hunger strike is to make the ultimate political action in order to claim one’s dignity and freedom. Its only aim is to defend our existence against any oppression and authority. After many years of being oppressed and kept as a hostage of the Greek state’s policy, I chose to go on a hunger strike for the second time, putting my life in danger inside an indifferent society witch only aims to consumption, individualism, and how you can have a nice time, apathetic to what might be happening around you.
For numerous years, in every attempt I did to get the political asylum, witch according to the evidence I have brought to the Ministry of Public Order (and witch are still filed there) it results that I am entitled to receive the political asylum as well as the Greek citizenship, nevertheless the present as well as all the previous ministers didn’t accept to sign. Violating, as they always do, the same laws they have passed.
To select the hunger strike is not an action of weakness or desperation. It is a way of struggle that will bring important results to the mass of immigrants, and also to all those that will stand up for me.
Hunger strike is a selection of political opposition to the front that state has opened for years now against refugees and immigrants, violating their rights every day (torturing, imprisoning, isolating them in concentration camps reminding us these of the Hitler period).
Could we assume that it’s worth dieing or getting disabled for a piece of paper? The question here, is not just about the political asylum but it concerns the total political repression of the Greek state against me, threatening me to quit my social and political activity. In other words they say: “Either you stop with that, or we get to punish you for life”.
I have chosen my way and I will keep on it. Just as the authoritarians and oppressors have chosen their own. Therefore, the clash with them is an one-way for every dignified human being. Neither have I regretted for what I have done in the past (in both Turkey and Greece) nor will I regret for anything I shall do now or in the future. This explains why I confront such oppression.
Whoever whishes to show his solidarity with me, should respect my political vision, that is anarchy, and my anarchic activity. I care for political and social solidarity, not humanitarian. Cause there can be nothing humanitarian in barbarism when you don’t clash with what bears barbarism that is political authority. ZULKUF MURAT BORA (BAHOZ)

Why I demand the political asylum, what political asylum is, and the case of Greece:
I, Zulkuf Murat Bora, more widely known as Bahoz, was forced to leave Turkey in 1995 due to my political beliefs and the Turkish state’s repression I was facing as a result from my struggle for the rights and liberty of the Kurdish people. Since 16/05/1999 there is an accusation against me from the Diyarbakir State Security Law Court of me being a part in an “armed and illegal Kurdish left organization” (which is how the Turkish state characterizes the Liberation Party of Kurdistan, in which I participated). The case against me is still pending. I asked for the political asylum in Greece. The first response I got was negative, so I applied again. The Greek state though didn’t accept even to examine my application, so I went on a hunger strike until my application was examined. That is on 02/05/2002 after 22 days of hunger strike. It’s a strange thing that the seven-member committee voted in favor of me with five votes for, one against and one neutral. From that time until today I have not received any answer, despite the fact that according to the legislature the minister owes to respond to the positive proposal of the committee within three to six months. The decision is still in his office in the Ministry of Public Order. In spite of the committee’s positive result the Minister does n t accept to sign the decision. His reasons are well known: after the pro-Kurdish Greek state handed in Otzalan to Turkey, both countries co-signed anti-terrorist agreements to assure that the Kurdish and Turkish fighters will be punished with many years of being kept as hostages, no responses to their applications for the political asylum and finally deportation.
What political asylum means:
According to the Geneva treaty (1951) when a person being outside its country of origin or accommodation, has a justified fear of prosecution, for reasons of race, religion, nationality, participation in a particular social group or political beliefs and because of this fear of prosecution he/she does not want or can return to his/hers country, deserves the political asylum.
Greece is a natural crossroads, an obligatory pass for the refugee camions. The asylum, however, is given to only an extremely few surviving refugees after long complicated and prohibitive bureaucratic processes. All applications are turned down after a long period of pending or suspension, the refugees are threatened with deportation. Greece is the last country within the “civilized” European Union in providing political asylums. We can say that political refugees are kept as hostages by the Greek state. They have no rights at all (medical care, education, work etc).
Hundreds of immigrants and refugees from numerous countries, waiting for their deportation, are kept for months imprisoned in vulgar conditions.
Refugees and immigrants who protest against this situation have been on hunger strikes many times before. The illegal and barbarous violations of the immigrants rights are multiplying continuously. The deportations of humans that are exiled because of wars, political refugees, with not even examining their applications for the political asylum, political prisoners abandoned in deserted camps in the winter, immigrants murdered by the cops in front of people have become common, everyday scenes…
ZULKUF MURAT BORA (BAHOZ)

In a world where all that circulates freely is money and the weapons that defend it …
The country we live in, has been importing refugees for years, victims of the expansionism of every great national leader, exporting immigrants to the industry of the West persecuted by the civil war and occupation, leftovers of their destructed cities.
Memory however, remains selective or completely wiped out. Today, society believes its supposedly self-sufficiency and prosperity. So what if half its citizens borrow their entertainment money from usurers and banks? The dominants war “against terrorism” in Yugoslavia, Kosovo, Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Turkey and other places is, we like to believe, so far away. The more remote such a war seems, the greater solidarity we feel. It’s just that refugees, victims of wars or strugglers against totalitarian dominions, are here. And they are kept waiting. A present without future. Promising to legalize them or give them political asylums, the “Greek paradise” can accept them only after turning them into docile workers, “nice folks” or even nicer police informers.
Maybe the purpose of this blackmailing is to turn them to “proper Greeks”: erase their past, make them work all day long, watch TV, take loans to buy cars, houses, for vacations or their children’s education, keep their mouth shut, don’t protest, fill in clubs and bars every weekend, pay taxes, vote, and always blame the “others”, the “foreigners”, the strangers and make them pay for everything that’s going wrong in their own lives. Maybe the purpose is to make refugees and immigrants the same as the locals: people that just survive instead of really living.
Whoever is not “brought to reason” is led to the police station to get convinced properly: humiliation, beating, torture and deportation to jailhouses or fire squads. While all these take place 50.000 applications for political asylums remain in the offices of the authorities. Applications that accomplish all the acceptance requirements, yet they do not become accepted just us the people who submit them. Bahoz is one of them. With no need for excuses, our solidarity is imposed by the history of the human race. A history that for some is a real tragedy and for others a farce… only that now, the tragedy and its consequences will have an impact on the carefree and indifferent too.
We make clear that from now on, the people we want near us and who we regard as friends and comrades are the people who carry on their bodies the evidence of the crimes committed by the states they lived in. all those who can teach us through their experience where the thirst for power, the lust for money and authorities to impose exploitation and crashing whoever resists leads. And this need for substantial knowledge of the reality they have imposed on us, suffices in itself to say: we want Bahoz now, here and for as long as he wishes. Bahoz and every Bahoz…
For us, it’s other things that we should erase from earth: states, nationalism, wars, repression, exploitation, gods, bosses and their world that revolves infinitely around money.

POLITICAL ASYLUM TO BAHOZ NOW!

HUNGER STRIKE SINCE MAY 17

SOLIDARITY to REFUGEES AND IMMIGRANTS

ASSEMBLY OF SOLIDARITY TO ZULKUF MURAT BORA (BAHOZ)