BERN, Jan 6 (AFP) - 16h15 - About 800 people demonstrated outside the Swiss federal
 parliament in Bern Saturday to denounce Turkish army operations in Kurdistan and to call for
 the release of the jailed rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan.

 Police said the demonstration, called by the Kurdish association in Bern to protest Turkish army
 activity in Kurdish-dominated areas of Turkey and neighbouring Iraq, passed off peacefully.

 In December, about a dozen activists occupied a room in the parliament building to protest
 against the police crackdown on hunger strikers in Turkish jails.

 Ocalan, the 51-year-old former leader of the rebel Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), was
 sentenced to death in June 1999 for "separatism and treason." He is being held in a prison on
 the island of Imrali in northwest Turkey.

 The PKK is campaigning for a separate homeland in southeastern Turkey.
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The Kurdistan Observer
www.kurdistanobserver.com