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Leyla Zana is a female Kurdish human-rights activist in Turkey, who was imprisoned for speaking Kurdish in the Turkish parliament. She was awarded the 1995 Sakharov Prize by the European Parliament, but was unable to collect it until her release in 2004.
Biography
Zana was elected to the Turkish Parliament in 1991 from Turkish Kurdistan. She spoke Kurdish when taking her parliamentary oath and at other times expressed herself in Kurdish and wore Kurdish articles of clothing, all of which were banned activities prior to 2002. In December 1994, along with four other Kurdish MPs, she was arrested and sentenced to 15 years in prison, after her parliamentary immunity was denied. In 1998 her sentence was extended because of a letter she had written that was published in a Kurdish newspaper.
With Turkey's position as an applicant to the European Union, the EU repeatedly called for her release on human rights grounds, making its position clear with the award of the Sakharov Prize. In 2001 the European Court of Human Rights ruled against Turkey after a review of her trial; although Turkey did not recognize the result, negotiations eventually permitted Zana to be visited by members of the EU parliament, and in 2004 she was given an unconditional release.
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