Dear friends,

I commend and congratulate you for your courageous and noble act of
fasting to secure freedom for Mrs Leyla Zana and peace for the downtrodden
Kurdish people. Your selfless, decent and humanitarian care and concern has been
heard around the world. Along with Leyla Zana's , you have no doubt uplifted
the spirits of many, many innocent people locked up behind bars. Perhaps you have
given some of them  a new lease of life as well as fresh hope, courage and a
much deeper meaning of life and all the senseless suffering around the world.
 

In a sense Leyla Zana and other prisoners are much freer than their captors, their
tormentors.  Certainly, Zana and other prisoners do not enjoy the same liberties
as their oppressors but they enjoy much more freedom in their minds and their
hearts.

Not just Leyla Zana and countless caring people in oppressors' prisons
and detention centers,  but also the whole Kurdish nation is indebted to you
for what you already have achieved. Nevertheless, there is much more work that
needs to be done. The kind of work that requires  both physical and mental energy.

I strongly believe that endangering your health through prolonged fasting
is not something that either Leyla Zana or the Kurdish people in search of peace
and freedom want.

As an elected representative of the Kurdish people,  I therefore take
this opportunity to implore each and everyone of you, both individually and
collectively,  to  bring your fast to an end. At the end of your fast and when you
have regained your strength, let us renew our commitments to explore new and
creative, non-violent ways and means  of publicising the plight of the disinherited
Kurdish people and their  elected representatives languishing in jails.

Yours with deepest affection and admiration,

Eziz Bawermend, MP
Parliament of Kurdistan in exile
Sydney Australia
Nov 11,1997