On December 11th, in conjunction with International Human Rights Day, we organized a promotion and donation program with some of our solution partners. During the live broadcast on our YouTube channel, we introduced Human Rights Solidarity’s (HRS) 2-year activities and projects for 2023.

During the program, a donation campaign was organized for the use of next year’s projects. The total amount of donations made by human rights volunteers through various channels reached 9,500 pounds. You can access the donation channels that will remain open throughout the year through the links we will add below this text.

The program, hosted by Barış Cem Kaya, featured guest appearances and support from notable figures such as academic-activist Hafsa Girdap, lawyer Ömer Turanlı, and NBA star-activist Enes Kanter, either live or via video message.

At the beginning of the broadcast, Co-chair of HRS, Merve Arslangören, spoke about what they have accomplished in the past 2 years and their future projects, and particularly invited young people to work together. Arslangören emphasized that they are sensitive to human rights violations occurring everywhere in the world and said “If you only care about your own problems, no one else will care about your problems. That’s why we try to be the voice of all victims.”

The founding Secretary General of HRS, Tuğba Timur, delivered a video message explaining what it means to be a manager in a human rights association and addressed the importance of activist actions for those who have suffered human rights violations anywhere in the world. 

Erhan Karatürk, who sought refuge in the UK 3 years ago, shared his difficulties during the process and how he overcame them. Karatürk said he came to the UK by boat and was unexpectedly arrested later, stating “I was detained for 5.5 months. If I had relied on the defence of the lawyer appointed to me, I could have been sentenced to 14 years. But HRS helped me find a new lawyer through a donation campaign and I was saved from being sentenced.”

One of the live broadcast guests, lawyer Ömer Turanlı, discussed how to carry out legal battles on international platforms. He highlighted that it is a long-term process that requires patience and said “Especially in countries where the law does not work, human rights fights cannot be left only to court decisions. They should be carried out socially with individual efforts and support from volunteer groups.”

Academic and activist Hafsa Girdap provided examples from her human rights fights in the United States. Girdap said that through her work, she understood certain problems that she had not realized while living in Turkey. She said “Here, I became more familiar with the lives of blacks and Latin American immigrants. This allowed me to look at the issues of Kurds and Alevis again, even made me understand them deeply.”

During the broadcast, promotional videos of HRS and some committees were shown, volunteers’ messages were shared, and projects implemented in collaboration with solution partners were introduced. Also, it was reported what activities will be held in the next year with the collected donations.

To support the HRS projects, you can make donations through the following channels:

1. PayPal: paypal.me/hrsolidarity
2. GoFundMe: gofund.me/412cd877
3. Human Rights Solidarity: hrsolidarity.org (Donate Now)
4. Patreon: patreon.com/londonadvocacy

The Yemen crisis remains one of the largest and worst crises in the World. The eight-year-old conflict between external powers makes it a totally unsafe country to inhabit.

The civil war has displaced more than one million people and currently affects around 23.7 million people, including almost 13 million children. The conflict has given rise to cholera outbreaks, medicine shortages, and famine, making it a living hell for its residents.

This devastating humanitarian crisis was caused by several factors such as fuel price hikes, military division, and Saudi intervention. With around three-quarters of its population living in poverty, Yemen has long been the Arab world’s poorest country and its humanitarian crisis has only gotten worse after the break-out of COVID-19. Yemen’s already severe famine problem, meanwhile, is dangerously close to total disaster.

Around 17.4 million individuals require food assistance, and an increasing percentage of people are dealing with emergency levels of hunger. Three out of four Yemenis require humanitarian aid and protection, and four million are internally displaced, according to the UN refugee agency.

Human rights violations in Turkey, which have reached unbearable levels, are not only Turkey’s problem but also Europe’s and even the world’s.

You can see the details of this study, which is like a report, prepared in partnership with Advocates For Dignity and Human Rights Solidarity in the appendix.

Turkey is a key player in the global arena.

With its geostrategic importance increasing due to the influx of immigrants into Europe, radical Jihadist ideologies into the West and Russian and Chinese influence into the Middle East and Africa, Turkey has become a crucial ally of the Transatlantic Alliance.

Furthermore, though still in abeyance of becoming a full member of the European Union, Turkey is indispensable for Europe’s territorial and financial security, and already holds power within European politics due to the ever-growing Turkish-speaking communities of Europe.

With its growing influence, Turkey once stood as a role model for newly democratising countries of Central Asia and the MENA region, as an icon of healthy synthesis of democratic norms and Islamic values.

Therefore, as a country with so much influence and potential, Turkey’s drift into becoming the world’s largest jailer of journalists and academics should be a world-wide concern.

Turkey Matters is a collection of infographics depicting the deterioration of the human rights situation in Turkey’s last decade.

It is a call for critical engagement, not for isolation or a boycott.

READ MORE FROM TURKEY MATTERS PAGE 

DATE: 10 December 2021

PLACE: Opposite of Number 10, Downing Street

COMMITTEE: Executive Committee

We celebrate our rights on the 10th of December every year on the occasion of the UN Human Rights Day. We demand justice for those who cannot speak up for themselves and whose voices are not heard. To make sure our voices are heard, we showed up opposite Downing Street with an 8m long banner wall and asked people to write their views on justice and current human rights violations around the world. We’ve seen people demanding justice for Uyghurs, Latin Americans, Palestine, Kurds, Turks, Libyans, Afghanis, Belarusian, women and transgenders. This project showed us the importance of true solidarity for human rights. We supported our Justice Wall with Instagram broadcasts at different times throughout the day.

Here are a volunteer’s words on their experience at the Justice Wall:

“ It was phenomenal, and one of my first interactive events (other than protests). I feel like us being in the frontier and socially interacting people in public and getting to see their reactions live was energetic and hyping!! It let us remember what we are doing, and what we can do. I truly believe it was a huge motivator as well as an amazing and inclusive project.”

And here is the speech HRS volunteer Asiye Betul made during the protest:

Dear friends,

Before we get started, I would like to celebrate our rights. Mine, yours and all of ours! Happy day human rights day to us!

We have united here today to observe and  celebrate the day of our rights, the day of  the rights that make us who we are and the rights that should be available for all of us. While doing so, we demand justice for those whose rights are being violated, those whose voices are being silenced. We remind you that we will not forget the rights that some have forgotten.

Human Rights Day is observed every year on 10 December — the day the United Nations General Assembly adopted, in 1948, and has been celebrated every year since then.

But Dear friends,

How much have these rights been applied since then? Why can’t all humans reach those rights?

Isn’t it strange that some rights are still being violated while we’re sat here celebrating them? Isn’t it strange that there’s a genocide happening in front of our eyes in China? Isn’t it strange that we’re building walls, putting out immigration bills? That there are journalists arrested in Brazil and Turkey? Isn’t it so strange that our rights are still being violated, in this very day?!

As we stand here with our wall of Justice, we will ask for the long awaited justice! We will not only ask for ours, but everyone’s rights! And we will let this wall be proof, of all those whose rights are denied and forgotten.

Because rights are only human, when they apply to all of us.

Because we are only human, when we fight for rights.

Dear Friends!

Happy Human rights day!

Let us celebrate our rights! Let us fight for our rights!

DATE: 30 October 2021

 COMMITTEE: Executive Committee

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF EVENT:

Conditions in Turkish prisons are deeply worrying. Overcrowded and unhygienic conditions, lack of proper access to healthcare is reported by many inmates. Prisons are like a death penalty for sick or terminally sick inmates and 65+ persons are in prison. We organised a protest opposite the Turkish Embassy in London, calling for the Turkish government to release all critically ill inmates in a Turkish prison for the duration of their medical care.

DATE: 25 September 2021

 COMMITTEE: Executive Committee

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF EVENT:

Pandemic thought us to share, and if a person in another country catches the virus, sooner or later we will too. Providing vaccines for our people only will not end the pandemic. Four in every five Brits have received their third vaccine, whereas developing nations worldwide struggle to get the first one. So, we took our banners and went in front of the cabinet office, calling the government to prioritise overseas aid programs over the third dose. Vaccine injustice underlines that nobody is safe until we’re all safe.

DATE:  28 March 2021 & 6 May 2021

PLACE: Parks & Instagram

COMMITTEE: Executive Committee

Human Rights Solidarity attests particular importance to supporting relatives of oppressed people in their times of difficulty. Hakan Dagdeviren is one such “child of incarcerated parents” who was diagnosed with leukaemia and was informed that cancer had metastasized to his liver, abdomen, neck, and armpits.

Human Rights Solidarity organized two Run for Hakan Events in March and May 2021 and gathered donations to improve conditions of Hakan and facilitate the marrow transplant surgery. Due to the Covid-19 restrictions we asked our volunteers to go out to the parks and run for Hakan for a minimum of 5 kilometers. We invited the running volunteers to join our live instagram broadcasts and share their thoughts with other volunteers.

Since the July 2016 coup attempt, Turkey has seen mass arrests and trials on terrorism charges of hundreds of thousands of people who have not involved in any violent act. Those people, among them are journalists, teachers, academics, human rights defenders, and opposition politicians, have been accused and tried for who they are, rather than what they might have done. Human rights groups have established that these proceedings were political and unfair.

Hakan’s parents are two of the 100,000 who have been imprisoned on false charges after 2016 in Turkey. His father was arbitrarily accused of terrorism just for being the head of a legally incorporated education company. Police raided their house on many occasions and interrogated Hakan about his parents when he was only 10 years old. These police raids and imprisonment of his parents made Hakan distressed. After all the things he went through Hakan was diagnosed with Leukaemia. He is being taken care of by his 70-year-old grandmother who is under threat due to COVID19 outbreak. Imagine a 10-year old kid’s life being upside down in political conflicts and imagine his parents’ grief and pain.

We didn’t only gather financial support for Hakan. We also encouraged our audience to write to their MPs and to the Ministry of Justice of Turkey in order to facilitate temporary release of either one of Hakan’s parents to stay with him during the murrow transplant. These attempts failed to convince the Turkish authorities, but we managed to transfer over £8,000 to Hakan’s relatives taking care of him before the transplant surgery.

Eventually Hakan had a successful surgery and entered a lengthy recovery process.