Strength to veganarchist Osman Evcan
Osman Evcan, who was born in 1959 in Samsun, is an anarchist prisoner and has been in a Turkish prison for 23 years. In 1992 he was sentenced to life imprisonment under the charges of manslaughter, robbery and participation in a leftist terrorist group. He was also imprisoned for 9 years from 1980 until 1989.
“To explain who I am, why I am in prison and how I adopted a vegan living culture, I am writing this letter to those who have supported my demand about my nutrition in prison. Arrested in 1992 on charges of ‘membership to an illegal organization’, I was sentenced to life imprisonment in connection with the Article 146/1 of Turkish Penal Code. The reason for the life sentence was the murder of an organization member upon the central decision of the organization due to his disobedience to organizational discipline. Although I personally don’t approve this act, I was involved in it in connection with the circumstances of that time. I evaluate this act as a murder.”
In 2003 Osman became an anarchist, a vegan and a supporter of animal liberation movements. His first high impact act was his hunger strike in 2011, demanding that vegan food is available in prisons, which lasted 42 days. During his strike, anarchists, animal and earth liberation advocates from all around the world and Turkey supported Osman’s struggle for prisoners’ access to vegan food. After 42 days of hunger strike the Turkish government gave in and made regulations for vegan and vegetarian prisoners. According to his comrades’ letter, prisoners’ demands for vegan food will be met as long as they are covered by substinence allowance. After this victory, the Turkish prisoner continued to participate in the anarchist struggle from within the prison. He supports the LGBT movement, animal liberation, women’s rights and anti-imperialist struggles. For 3 years he went on hunger strikes protesting against the animal slaughter during the annual “feast of sacrifice” and wrote articles in defence of nature and about the multifaceted identities of people in society.
Today he is in Kocaeli, in a maximum security prison. After 33 days of hunger strike in June 2015 he took vegan supplies one step further and gained the right to receive vegan food from comrades and his friends and family. However, the prison administration violated his gained right for arbitrary reasons. They banned him from receiving vegan food forcing him on a hunger strike yet again. Osman continues his indefinite hunger strike from November 10th 2015. On his 16th day of strike after the elections in Turkey and the approval of the hegemony of Islamic fascism of AKP, the fascist regime is revealed in the techniques of oppression in the prisons, and the pressure on the anarchist prisoner increases and his access to vegan food is blocked. The technique he is subjected to states “obey or die”. Nevertheless he is determined to continue his hunger strike until – as he himself says – absolute freedom.
What is clear through every political prisoner’s or imprisoned struggler’s case is that the states and governments on an international scale are implementing common practices. The intensification of repression, the development of maximum security prisons, the solitary confinement policies, the prisoners’ psychological exhaustion and the total subjugation of their bodies are long standing tactics of domination aiming to weaken every idea of freedom and every need to claim it. The struggle of the Turkish anarchist is a struggle in defence of every struggling eco-anarchist and their demands. We should eradicate the false assumption that this scenario can’t happen in the Greek territory and prepare the resistance against this possibility, showing our internationalist solidarity and fight for the abolition of every prison, every cell/cage.
We stand in solidarity with the hunger strikers who, by putting their bodies forward as barriers against authority, they claim ground in the struggle for total liberation.
Until the destruction of all prisons, factories, laboratories of animal exploitation and industries that destroy the Earth. Until the death of the state and the dominant civilization, no one and nothing is free.
Uncompromising struggle for Total Liberation and Anarchy
Black/Green Anarchist Collective
in Greek as we received