“As Hebun’s founders, we will not accept the shutting down of our association and we will continue to provide every opportunity we can. The right to life is the most divine right. To make ourselves heard, to make the problems of LGBT individuals visible and to create a society in which we can live together, we, as three Hebun LGBT activists want to declare that we are staging a hunger strike and we won’t stop until our demands are met.”
Source: “Hebûn LGBT Diyarbakır Açlık Grevinde” (“Hebun LGBT Diyarbakır on Hunger Strike”), Gelawej, 18 February 2015, http://www.gelawej.net/index.php/lgbtt/1465-hebun-lgbt-diyarbakir-aclik-grevinde
“As Hebun LGBT, an LGBT association founded in March 2011, we started with many reasons for making a contribution to build a more livable and secure society, such as struggling against hate speech and hate murders. Also we aspire to restrain families from murdering their children because of their sexual orientation and sexual identity. We aim at having local authorities accept that LGBT individuals are principle components of society, and they must be provided with all kinds of support. Moreover, we want to generate a solution for sex workers.
“As in every part of society, there are interrelated and converse dynamics in our living space. Unfortunately, homophobia and transphobia continue their existence intensely in all dynamics.
“In the socio-political dynamics in question with all that, and despite all these, we strived for bringing into view the problems which LGBT individuals face and say stop and we want to keep on [doing] it.
“Now we come face to face with shutting down our office in which we, as Hebun LGBT association, intend to further our efforts, reach more people and make our problems visible by also looking out for the problems of our living space.
“We filed an application for a donation from Diyarbakır Municipality, which we think is socially sensitive in many respects and we asked that the grant be paid openly. The main reason for our application for a donation is the expectation of our belief that they would stand against the “alienation” and they would support us. Moreover, while one of the reasons for our application is the material grant, the other is to understand whether the local authorities are side by side with each social component which is not entitled to survive and exposed to hate speech socio-economically and politically. But although we are in a critical process in every respect, we did not get any feedback after two weeks. We are constantly directed to different units of the municipality or we are being told that we would be called back and therefore we think that we are being put off. As Hebun founders, we will not accept the shutting down of our association and we will continue to provide every opportunity we can.
“The right to life is the most divine right. To make ourselves heard, to make the problems of LGBT individuals visible and to create a society in which we can live together, we, as three Hebun LGBT activists want to declare that we are staging a hunger strike and we won’t stop until our demands are met.
Best regards,
Hebun LGBT Diyarbakır Association”
Update: Upon receiving an oral pledge from Diyarbakir Joint Mayor Fırat Anlı, Hebun LGBT Diyarbakır decided to temporarily halt their hunger strike on February 19, 2015. (source)