"The Kurds are not Turk nor Arab, nor Persian. As a culturally, linguistically and racially distinct people, a historic people, inhabiting a well-defined territory, presently among Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria, the Kurds have a right to a homeland, a State of their own. Against heavy odds, they are struggling for Freedom since the break of the Ottoman Empire.

Wandering through many lands looking for asylum, the Kurdish freedom fighter Abdulla Ocalan was trapped by the Turkish intelligence in Nairobi, with the collusion of the Greek Embassy and the Kenyan authorities and kidnapped to Turkey on 16February,1999 to stand trial on criminal charges punishable with death - the replay of a classic gambit of the power structure against the emergent forces.

Abdulla Ocalan, though a criminal and a terrorist in the eyes of the Turkish authorities, is a hero to his people. He should receive justice according to international norms. As friends of the Turkish and the Kurdish people, we appeal to the Government of Turkey to release Abdulla Ocalan and initiate negotiations with him, and his party for evolving a mutually acceptable compromise which would bring peace to Turkey and autonomy to the Kurdish-majority region, under Turkish sovereignty.'