Solidarity Protest for Imprisoned Cancer Patient Zere

"Justice for everyone, the right to medical treatment for everyone" was one of the slogans which female members of the Labour Movement Party (EHP) shouted yesterday (29 July) evening when they gathered at the Taksim tramway stop in central Istanbul.

Around 60 women called for "not the Ergenekon members, but the revolutionaries" to be released from prison.

They expressed their solidarity with Güler Zere, a political prisoner who has cancer in its fourt stage and is being confined to a prisoner's ward in hospital in Adana.

The protesters called for Dr. Nur Birgen, head of the Forensic Medical Institute's 3rd specialist committee to be investigated. They accused her of acting unethically when  her committee decided that Zere was able to continue her treatment as a prisoner.

They accused defendants of the Ergenekon trial to have succeeded in being released from detention by obtaining fake medical reports, "while revolutionary prisoners are being sentenced to death."

The press statement of the EHP was supported by the Free Woman, women of the Freedom and Solidarity Party (ÖDP), the Socialist Platform of the Oppressed (ESP), the Istanbul branch of the Human Rights Association (İHD), the Tekstil-Sen and Genel-İş trade unions, the Nazım Hikmet Marxist Sciences Academy, the Istanbul LGBT civl rights initiative, Antikapitalist, ODAK and People's Culture Centres. Poet and writer Ruhan Mavruk and writer Sennur Sezer also spoke and expressed their support. (EZÖ/AG)