Relatives of Mavi Marmara martyrs protest int’l silence on Israel’s crime

Scores of Turkish citizens and relatives of martyrs, who were killed in the 2010 Israeli naval raid on the aid ship Mavi Marmara, rallied on Thursday outside Caglayan court in Istanbul in protest at the failure of the international community to bring the killers to justice.

Most of the speakers at the protest highlighted that the families of the victims refuse any Israeli apology for the Mavi Marmara massacre until the killers are punished and the blockade on Gaza is ended.

One of the relatives stated in a speech during the protest that the families of Mavi Marmara martyrs would not stay silent and would keep raising the issue until the perpetrators get their comeuppance.

He added that the international silence on the Mavi Marmara massacre has made the relatives of the victims more determined to keep remembering and chanting their names in order to keep their issue alive.

“We will not backtrack on taking legal action against four officers of the Israeli army accused of giving orders to attack the ship and we will keep our protests against Israel until it ends its blockade on Palestine,” one of the martyrs’ mothers said during the rally.

At the end of the protest, a number of children and women released balloons carrying the names of the Mavi Marmara martyrs as a tribute to their memory.

The Israeli deadly attack on the Mavi Marmara ship on May 31, 2010 in international waters claimed the lives of nine Turkish men who were members of the Freedom Flotilla aid convoy to the besieged Gaza Strip.