CONSTANT reports on the insurgent and brazen far right, alternating with stories of personal nastiness and bullying, can tempt us to believe the claim that human nature is naturally selfish, and to retreat from activity. But a glimpse into another way of being reminds us that we have a choice.

For me, as for many others from different parts of the world, the Kurdish movement has opened up that positive vision. Of course, we see many acts of individual empathy and support all around us, but our capitalist world builds on and promotes selfishness and competition. In a system that promotes social solidarity and mutual support, people rise to the challenge, and this can become the norm.

All familiar stuff to readers of this paper, but it is rare that one gets the opportunity to experience what level of selflessness human beings are capable of. I was hit by this in the cemeteries of Kurdish fighters in Northern Syria, and now I have been hit again in the Kurdish Community Centre in Strasbourg.

I have visited them twice, and whenever I look up the Kurdish news sites, I am fearful of the latest report on their health. The 14 Strasbourg hunger strikers — along with Imam Sis in Wales — reached their 70th day without food on Sunday. This campaign of hunger strikes, which now includes over 300 people, most of them political prisoners in Turkish prisons, was begun by imprisoned Kurdish MP, Leyla Guven, who stopped taking food on November 7.

The hunger strikers’ demand is modest. All they ask is that Turkey end the isolation of imprisoned Kurdish leader, Abdullah Ocalan, and allow visits from his family and his lawyer. Isolation is counter to international law on human rights, where it is regarded as a form of torture. It is also against the Turkish constitution.