Director: Maria Binder

Genre: documentary

Year: 2023

Length: 95 minutes

In this film, Kurdish human rights lawyer Erin Keskin has been designated an enemy of the state and faces a life sentence in more than a hundred criminal cases. The courts will soon hand down her sentence. The film tells the story of the last year before the possible imprisonment.

Eren Keskin, born in 1959 in Bursa, has been fighting for more than 30 years for fundamental human rights for women, LGBT+, and minorities including Kurds. She is the vice-president of the Turkish Human Rights Association (İHD) and a former president of its Istanbul branch. She opposes torture and sexual violence. To aid sexually abused women in Turkish prisons, she co-founded Legal Aid for Women Who Were Raped or Otherwise Sexually Abused by National Security Forces. Because of her human rights activities. she has been arrested and imprisoned, as well as targeted by numerous lawsuits.

In 1995 Amnesty International adopted her as a prisoner of conscience. In 2002 Turkey’s State Security accused her of “aiding and abetting” the PKK because she supported the right Kurds to use their native language in Turkey. In March 2006 a Turkish court sentenced her to 10 months in prison for insulting the country’s military. The sentence was converted to a fine, which Keskin refused to pay. From 2013 to 2016 she was the editor in chief of the newspaper Özgür Gündem.

In March 2018 she was sentenced to 5 years and 3 months imprisonment for insulting the president and another 2 years and 3 months for “degrading Turkishness, the Republic, institutions and organs of the state” as defined by Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code.

On December 3, 2021, Turkish police raided Keskin’s home, to summon her to account for a speech she gave in Turkey’s southeastern Dersim province in 2019.

In 2004 she received the Aachen Peace Award “for her courageous efforts and activities for human rights.” In 2005 she was awarded the Esslingen-based Theodor Haecker Prize for Civic Courage and Political Integrity. In 2018 she received the Helsinki Civil Society Award from the Netherlands Helsinki Committee.