Protests of Prison Raids, Abuse Prompt Crackdown by Turkey By John Ward Anderson Washington Post Foreign Service Saturday, January 13, 2001; Page A15 ISTANBUL, Jan. 12 -- Despite pressure from the European Union to clean up its human rights record, Turkey has launched a major crackdown on human rights groups and activists for protesting government raids on prisons last month that left 32 people dead. Five branches of Turkey's Human Rights Association have been closed, several of its members have been detained and other protesters have been jailed for demonstrating against the Dec. 19 prison raids, demanding an independent investigation and publicizing what they say is widespread torture and inhumane isolation of inmates in Turkey's prisons. The simultaneous storming of 20 prisons last month left 30 inmates and two security officers dead. Some of the inmates reportedly died after setting themselves on fire when police stormed the prisons. The operation, code-named Return to Life, was designed to break a two-month hunger strike by hundreds of political prisoners in prisons across Turkey. The hunger strikers were protesting a plan by Turkish officials to move them out of large, dormitory-style facilities to prisons with smaller cells. Many victims of the raids belonged to the Revolutionary People's Liberation Party-Front, a radical leftist group that has vowed revenge against the government. In recent weeks, four police officers have been killed and more than 20 people injured in attacks on police facilities, including one this month in which a militant detonated a bomb strapped under his clothes inside an Istanbul police station. In the most recent incident, one officer was killed and another injured late Wednesday when masked gunmen fired on a police car near the Istanbul airport. No one has claimed responsibility. Meanwhile, several hundred inmates reportedly are continuing their hunger strike to the death to protest inhumane treatment of prisoners. Some of the inmates have been fasting for 83 days and are said to be in critical condition. The prison turmoil and crackdown on human rights activists come as Turkey faces increasing pressure to improve its human rights record as a prerequisite to European Union membership. Jonathan Sugden, an analyst with Human Rights Watch, said rights activists in Turkey protesting and publicizing the raids and continuing prison problems were being harassed and threatened, while physical evidence from the raids "seems to be disappearing." "The Turkish authorities are allowing no center ground," he said. "How is it possible to determine what's true or false?" On Sunday, four activists were arrested while attempting to lay a black wreath outside the Istanbul offices of the Democratic Left Party, led by Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit. The four were charged with demonstrating without permission, which carries a one-year prison term, and are being held in prison. "This is the system in Turkey. There is no permission for objection," said Eren Keskin, president of the Istanbul branch of the Human Rights Association, who was detained during Sunday's protest. "The situation in the prisons is really bad. The inmates are injured, ill and still death-fasting. Nothing has changed." The Turkish government did not respond to specific allegations raised by human rights and prison activists, but cited previous blanket denials of wrongdoing during the raids or prisoner mistreatment in general. Three Justice Ministry officials have been assigned to investigate the charges. "All humanitarian demands have been met" in the new prisons, Justice Minister Hikmet Sami Turk told reporters. Government officials defended the Dec. 19 raids, saying the action was necessary to wrest control of the prison system from violent mafias. Prisons previously had as many as 100 inmates living in large, unpatrolled communal areas. After the December operation, inmates were moved to new, more restrictive prisons that have cells housing one to three prisoners each. Hghts activists have criticized the new prisons, noting that they were designed principally for small-group isolation, with each cell having a dedicated switch for guards to control its electricity, sewerage system, water and heat. The prisons have no communal areas for inmates to socialize, they said. Activists said such conditions typically raise the risk of inmate abuse by guards. Human rights activists investigating the raids said prisoners were systematically beaten and tortured during the operation and afterward while being transferred to the new prisons. They said the inmates, many of whom are awaiting trial and have not been convicted of a crime, are housed in solitary confinement or small-group isolation. A joint statement by the independent organizations Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International said there were reports that some inmates were stripped and sexually abused with truncheons upon arrival at one of the new prisons. A report released last week by the Human Rights Association of Turkey said soldiers used gas, fire and smoke bombs during the raids. It disputed government claims that most inmates who died or were injured had set themselves afire, stating, "preliminary autopsy reports say the majority of inmates died because of bullets and burns and one because of gas poisoning." "Torture is continuing. The inmates are injured, lonely, cold, wet and naked in the cells, waiting in incomplete prisons without water, electricity and heating," the report said. "The state, instead of protecting the lives of inmates, took their basic right to life in order to prove its own authority." ------------------------------------------- Macdonald Stainsby Rad-Green List: Radical anti-capitalist environmental discussion. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/rad-green ---- Leninist-International: Building bridges within Marxism in the tradition of V.I. Lenin. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international ---- _______________________________________________ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
