Ebru Firat, is a young woman, with a strong, enthusiastic and courageous personality. She was born in a small village in the South West of France, to a family of Kurdish origin, and she grew up in the popular district of Mirail until she turned 18 years of age. On March 25, she turned 28 years old. However, for the third consecutive year, she will be alone to celebrate her birthday, in a cell of 3 m², in a prison in Turkey.
Her crime? Being a young woman, free and committed, who decided in 2008, at the age of 18, to go to the Qandil Mountains in northern Iraq. There, in contact with the ubiquitous PKK, she trained in care and worked as a nurse for several years. In March 2015, while the battle of Kobane raged, she left to join the Resistance against Islamic neo-fascism, serving as a nurse for the YPG and as an interpreter for the International Volunteers. Arrested in 2016 at Istanbul airport as she was preparing to return to France, the Turkish government retains from its history only her passage with the Kurdish Resistance and not its commitment against the Islamic State that, however, the Turkish state also claims to fight. She was sentenced in November 2016 to 5 years in prison and since serving her term in solitary confinement as a political prisoner.
As Agnès Casero, her lawyer in France and president of the association ALEF (Association for Secularism and International Mutual Assistance of Women), recalls: “‘It is possible to enter into communication with her, through our association. She asks because each letter received gives her a good morale boost! ”
We call on all those who share the ideals of Freedom, Justice, and Humanity to send to Ebru a postcard, or a letter or a drawing, or a poem…The letters we receive will be transmitted to Ebru. Ideally we would like Ebru to receive these letters for May 1st, which she celebrates every year in her cell.
In order for letters to pass Turkish censorship, they must avoid any political considerations, and privilege words of encouragement and solidarity.
You can send your letters to :
ALEF
142, rue de Clignancourt
75018 PARIS
FRANCE
Thanks for Ebru !
(via CNT-AIT France, slightly edited for clarity)
