JAILED journalists from the Mesopotamia News Agency in Turkey are on a protest hunger strike over the continued isolation of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Ocalan, it was announced on World Press Freedom Day yesterday.
They are part of the growing campaign across Turkish prisons which has seen a reported 7,000 joining the hunger strike action in protest at the treatment of Mr Ocalan which they say amounts to torture.
At a press conference in the largely Kurdish city of Diyarbakir yesterday the Mesopotamia Women Journalists Platform announced that 14 women journalists had been jailed with 13 of the agency’s workers on hunger strike.
CLAUDIA WEBBE looks at how Britain’s Nato ally has upped the stakes in its effort to silence domestic dissenting voices
VIJAY PRASHAD details how US support for Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa allowed him to break the resistance of the autonomous Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF)
As Palestine Action prisoners go weeks without food, alleging dangerous neglect and detention without trial, campaigners warn that a near-total media blackout is hiding a crisis that could turn fatal – and fuel a growing wave of public anger. ELIZABETH SHORT reports


