My friend Osman Kavala has just been sentenced to spend the rest of his lifetime in prison. Why? For being a person who has worked for democracy and peaceful relations between people of different faiths and backgrounds. Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan sees him for what he is, an outstanding representative of their country’s civil society and a living repudiation of his despotism. So he has insisted on Osman being sentenced, despite a growing international outcry.
I won’t write about his ‘case’. There is plenty of coverage of this elsewhere and I hope there is more of it and that it doesn’t stop until Erdoğan falls and Osman is freed. I protested when he was first jailed four-and a half years ago, on preposterous charges that were dismissed only to be replaced by ones even more absurd. With others, I helped create a short ‘Lockdown Opera’ composed by Nigel Osborne, which brings the scandal to our computer screens as it sets Osman’s profound humanity to music.
We are all bodily people. When the door clangs behind you and you are confined to your cell, as Osman is now, you experience the binary difference between being imprisoned and being free.
