Mazlum Doğan

Mazlum Doğan was a journalist and a founding member of the Kurdistan Workers' Party. He was a Kurdish Alevi Muslim. He has been the first chief editor of the party's newspaper Serxwebûn. In 1979, he had planned to leave Turkey towards Syria, but was arrested and after serving time in the infamous Diyarbakir No. 5 prison. Mazlum Doğan committed suicide in protest of the Turkish coup d'état and the inhumane conditions he and other prisoners were facing inside of the penitentiary. Today he is seen as a hero and a martyr for the Kurdish resistance movement.