(Forwarding: The comrades are still fighting on!)
Turkey lays siege to two jails, toll rises
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By Steve Bryant
ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turkish security
forces laid siege to two prisons on
Wednesday for the second day running
as the justice minister urged protesting
prisoners to end armed resistance to
troops which has so far cost at least 19
lives.
Paramilitary police raided Istanbul's Umraniye prison before
dawn, accompanied by fire-engines, a bulldozer and armoured
cars. A few hours later they moved on Canakkale prison in
western Turkey where television pictures showed they had knocked huge
holes in the
walls of the prison blocks to gain entrance.
"There is strong resistance at both prisons," an Interior Ministry
official told Reuters. "The
operation was re-started from where it left off yesterday evening."
Justice Minister Hikmet Sami Turk, speaking to reporters in Ankara,
called on the
inmates of both jails to give up and put an end to the bloodiest
clashes in years in
Turkey's prisons, where prisoners often have more control than their
jailers.
"This meaningless resistance at Umraniye and Canakkale has to stop," he
said. "I am
calling on them once again to end their resistance. It leads nowhere."
Turk said that two paramilitary gendarmes had died along with at least
16 prisoners, most
of whom burned themselves to death, when security forces stormed 20
prisons on
Tuesday to end hunger strikes aimed at blocking the transfer of
prisoners to small cells
from the large dormitories they now occupy.
Another 78 prisoners had been injured in the raids.
Anatolia news agency reported a 17th prisoner had died of burns in
Ankara's Numune
hospital on Wednesday.
Paramilitary police armed with gas grenades and backed by helicopters
struck early on
Tuesday, moving in after weeks of vain attempts to bring a peaceful end
to the hunger
strikes.
At least 12 inmates died at Istanbul's Bayrampasa prison, where
officials said the clouds
of teargas used in Tuesday's raid delayed a full search of the jail for
many hours.
By Tuesday night, security forces had taken control of most of the
prisons, with only
Umraniye and Canakkale holding out.
The security operation was slammed by Greece, Turkey's long-time rival
and critic, and
the European Commission also expressed concern.
"We are worried," said Jean-Christophe Filori, spokesman for EU
Enlargement
Commissioner Guenther Verheugen.
"We expressed our worries yesterday and once again we call on all
parties to stop the
violence in order to come to a pacific outcome of this conflict,"
Filori said. Turkey is a
candidate for EU membership.
ANGER IN STREETS, CAUTION WARNED
The action sparked angry demonstrations in Istanbul and Ankara, where
protesters
remained on the streets until late on Tuesday, clashing with police and
setting alight a
police car.
Prison officials say the transfer of inmates to smaller cells is
necessary to break the grip of
organised crime gangs, extreme leftists, Kurdish separatists and
militant Islamists.
Many of those involved in the prison protests were jailed for links to
the Revolutionary
People's Liberation Party-Front, a militant urban guerrilla group that
police said in August
planned a bomb attack on a military airbase hosting U.S. and British
air patrols over
northern Iraq.
Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit said the seizure of the leftists' jail
dormitories would stop the
group's leaders directing other actions. But he warned of possible
retaliation by leftist
groups at large in major cities.
"Of course there could be provocations; we've got to act very
cautiously," Ecevit told
reporters in Ankara. "The important thing is that a major terrorist
nest has been wiped
out, and that is an important success."
The protesters say the small cells will make them more vulnerable to
abuse by jailers.
They are demanding that the plans be scrapped and sections of strict
anti-terrorism laws
under which many of them were jailed be repealed.
Turk said the government would not back down from plans to transfer
prisoners to small
"F-Type" cells, adding that damage from the raids had already led him
to transfer nearly
500 prisoners to various facilities with the new cells.
"With the new developments...we have no choice but to open some of the
F-Type jails,"
he said.
Turk said he respected the right to criticise the raids, dubbed
"Operation Return to Life",
but defended them as necessary to rescue hundreds of prisoners with
weakening health
under the hunger strikes.
He said 821 protesters, 187 of whom had been on a "death fast" in which
they consumed
only sugared water for some 60 days, had been taken to hospital but
that some of them
were refusing to accept medical treatment.
"It's a policy these groups have of wiping out their own members. We
want these youths
to give that up."
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LONDON (Reuters) - A group of protesters angered by violent clashes between
security forces and inmates in Turkish jails occupied the London offices of
the European Commission on Wednesday, witnesses said.
The protesters, described by police as Kurds, told Reuters in a brief
telephone call from the building that they were the "families and friends of
political prisoners in Turkey".
A spokesman declined to say how many were inside the building.
Turkish security forces have laid siege to two prisons where armed inmates
have clashed with troops in confrontations that have so far cost at least 19
lives.
Police said they were negotiating with the occupiers in an attempt to
persuade them to leave.
A police spokesman said: "They have a history of setting themselves on fire
and that is always a risk when they demonstrate."
Police at the scene said another group of protesters had gathered at the
London Eye, the giant ferris wheel on the banks of the Thames, and
threatened to set fire to themselves
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