A delegation of political party leaders from Norway, Sweden, Finland and Denmark made a statement outside Edirne Prison where their request to visit (Demirtaş) was rejected. Here is their statements:
Jonas Sjöstedt; the leader of Sweden Left Party: We consider HDP to be our sister party and to be the most important party for democratic opposition in Turkey.
Li Andersson; the leader of Finland Left Alliance / Vasemmisto: We are here today to express our solidarity and support to the political prisoners of HDP. It’s unacceptable that a legal opposition is criminalized in this way because of their political views.
Audun Lysbakken; Leader of Norway Socialist Left Party:The denial of our demand to see Demirtaş only underlines the authoritarian character of the decision to imprison the democratically elected parliamentarians.
Here, outside the prison we demand the immediate release of the arrested parliamentarians fort hem to be able to their job, to represent their voters.
Pernille Skipper, Leader of Denmark’s Red/Green Alliance / Enhedslisten : For us, for Nordic countries this is not just a matter of Turkey’s policy, it’s a matter of Europe and also human rights.
We’ll go home and keep on make pressure on our governments to demand the release the imprisoned HDP MPs. And we also put forward the demand that EU freeze the negotiations with Turkey until the human rights situation has been corrected. It is a great violation of human rights, and EU must take its responsibility.
8 December 2016, Edirne