Delegation:
Terry Harkin, International Department
Paul Little, Ard Comhairle
Micheal og Devine, Derry IRSP
The IRSP delegation was part of a nine person delegation from Ireland.
Those who also travelled were Alec McCrory, Robert Russell, Patrick
McCotter, Jim McVeigh (Belfast Committee), James O'Sullivan (Dublin
Committee), Alex Maskey (Sinn Fein MLA), and Rory O'Driscoll (London IKM),
who co-ordinated the visit.
The first part of the delegation travelled to Turkey and was arrested and
held for an hour in Istanbul. When they were released, they were then
followed throughout the remaining days. They managed to lose the Turkish
police on a number of occasions by splitting up and at different times
during the week they all got into Armutlu for short periods to see the
death fasters.
The second part of the delegation, which included the IRSP representatives,
was met at the airport and brought directly into Armutlu were they stayed
for the duration of the visit.
ARMUTLU
Armutlu is the district of Istanbul were the TAYAD death fasters live. It
is essentially a shanty town carved into the side of one of the seven
mountains that comprise the ancient city of Istanbul. The district has a
population of 6-8000 and was established over twenty years ago by the
DHKP-C who seized the land from the rich capitalists who intended to build
holiday hotels etc. The DHKP-C handed the land over to local people and the
shanty town emerged over a number of years. When we arrived in Armutlu we
found a community under siege from the Turkish military and police, but it
was a community unbowed and unbroken.
In the week prior to our arrival in Armutlu, the DHKP-C had lost two
volunteers--one in a bombing in Taksim Square police headquarters and one
death fast volunteer. The area had been attacked during the funeral of Umus
Sahingoz, a 32-year old member of the Marxist group Revolutionary People's
Liberation Party-Front (DHKP-C), who died on deathfast. The area had been
attacked by Turkish government forces using different types of CS gas
produced and supplied by the US.
We spoke to victims of the gas attack including at least one death faster,
the gas is a special gas that does not damage clothing but causes extreme
acid type burns on the skin. We took photographs of empty cartridges and
samples for scientific examination in
Ireland. We also have the address of the manufactures in America.
Following the state attack on the funeral of Umus Sahingoz, the local
resistance had barricaded the Armutlu district to keep the state forces out
and it was into this tense atmosphere that our delegation were welcomed by
the people of Armutlu.
The agenda and itinerary for our delegation was severely disrupted by the
state security forces and the difficulties with getting interpreters due to
the threat to them by the Turkish state, which cannot be overstated, but by
the end of the week, between the delegation in Armutlu and our colleagues,
who were staying outside, we met all the groups that we were supposed to meet.
DEATH OF ABDULBARi YUSUFOGLU - TAYAD
In the early hours of Thursday 20th September Abdulbari Yusufoglu, a member
of TAYAD, the relatives solidarity group, died after 137 days on death fast
in Armutlu. Abdulbari was twenty-one years old and came from the Izmir
area of western Turkey and we had the honour of speaking with him two days
before his death. The delegation took part in the burial rights for the
death faster
before he was removed for interment in is home town. Overall it is the
opinion of the delegation that the people of Armutlu, the death fasters and
their families are of the highest integrity. Their dignity in the face of
such oppression is a salutary lesson for us all. It is worth a special
mention that all members of the delegation have been deeply affected by
their time spent amongst the death fasters in Armitlu and that Michael og
Devine, although it was extremely difficult for him, coped well when faced
with the full horror of what is being allowed to happen in Turkey. It was
an honour to be able to pay our tribute to Abdulbari Yusufoglu in person.
Over the week of our delegation visit we spent the most of our time with
the DHKP-C in Armutlu and had a number of meetings with the TAYAD
(Solidarity hunger strikers outside the prisons and families and
supporters) death fasters. We also met with death fast representatives from
the KM(ML) Turkish Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist) and a delegation of
Turkish human rights
lawyers. We also had a visit and interview with the editorial staff of the
left wing human rights magazine VATAN, which has been raided and suppressed
on a number of occasions by the Turkish state. On the Friday we held a
press conference outside the main death fast house in Armutlu.
Approximately ten television crews attended the press conference, which was
given by Paul
Little (Belfast Committee), James O'Sullivan (Dublin Committee), Michael Og
Devine (Derry Committee), Terry Harkin (IRSP International Department).
It is our considered opinion that both the prisoners and their supporters
will continue on hunger strike until the situation inside the prisons is
resolved. The first step on the road to a resolution will be to initiate
dialogue between the Turkish state and the prisoners representatives. The
prisoners and their supporters would welcome this dialogue.
We recommend that all International pressure that can be garnered together
is brought to bear on the Turkish government to initiate this dialogue.
The prisoners demands are, we believe, legitimate and just and constitute
basic human rights.
The seven demands are:
Demands of the resisting prisoners
1) Architectural and legal reforms have to be made to the F-Type prisons.
The existence of cells for one or three persons has to be abolished. The
doors of the cells have to be kept open until the necessary reforms have
been made. It has to be guaranteed that the prisoners and those awaiting
trial can live together without any preconditions being placed upon them.
The denial of living rights and isolation must end. Common living areas for
the prisoners and those awaiting trial has to be created.
a. The common facilities for sports, social and cultural activities, which
are said to have been created, have to be opened for usage without being
bound to any preconditions. This has to be recognized as a right and the
laws which are preventing this have to be abolished. There has to be
reforms to meet the requirements for sports, social and cultural activities
between the different blocks.
b. Legal publications (books, magazines and newspapers) have to be allowed,
taking into account that even the recent law doesn't prohibit this. The
examples of the confiscation of publications, the arbitrariness of this,
has to end. The obstacles placed before us regarding our rights to letters
and communications has to be removed. The practice of limiting visits to 30
minutes when our visitors are travelling hundreds of kilometers and having
their visit almost turned into a torture session has to end. These limits
and this arbitrary behaviour has to be stop. The right to an open visit
must not be put under conditions. It most be allowed and in our favour.
There must not be limits to the articles of daily use like food and clothes
which are brought to the prisons by our families. It has to be made
possible for our families to hand over refrigerators, ovens, radios,
typewriters and cassette recorders which are necessary articles for daily use.
c. Regarding our legal problems, any arbitrary restrictions placed upon us
during our talks with our lawyers has to be removed. The right of to have a
"private consultation with our legal defence" has to be respected. Lawyers
most be allowed to talk to more than one client at the same time and the
arbitrariness of the humiliating and degrading treatment of our legal
defence must end.
d. The internal and external canteen requirements have to be regulated and
made suitable. The practice of overpricing has to stop. The practice of
"subjecting those who are imprisoned to charges", which forces prisoners to
pay for the electric, television and medicine on their own, has to end.
e. The right of the prisoners to be represented has to be recognized and
practised.
f. The sentenced prisoners and those awaiting trial have to stay in the
same common areas.
g. Our demands and our rights have to be guaranteed by law by the state.
They will be absolutely and completely applied to both the F-Type prisons
and in all other prisons where political prisoners and those awaiting trial
are kept, and they will be applied without making any changes. Any such
changes or "improvements" which we judge to be trying to break our thoughts
have to be abandoned.
2. Article 16 of the Anti-Terror-Law has to be removed. The change to
article 16 has legitimized isolation and attacks. Isolation was put into
law and consolidated by tying its practice to the arbitrariness within all
the prisons. Furthermore the Minister of Justice has to keep the promise he
made before 19th December, to remove the double standard of the "penalty
execution" between political and social prisoners by making the necessary
reforms to article 17 and to article 5 of the Anti-Terror-Law which is
connected to it.
3. The tripartite protocol has to be cancelled. This protocol has robbed us
of our right to defence. It has abolished the confidentiality regarding the
trial documents between the lawyer and their client. It has to be cancelled
as a whole because it not only attacks our right to defence but it is also
the basis for the attacks and massacres on the prisoners. It also contains
articles which are an attack upon our families and doctors.
4. The "Observatory Committees" have to be represented not by those persons
who represent those who apply isolation and repression; but by those who
represent institutions like the Bar Associations, the Medical Association
of Turkey (TAB), Human Right Association (IHD), Union of the Chambers of
Engineers and Architects of Turkey (TMMOB) and the various association
representing the families of prisoners like TAYAD, YAB and Tm Yargi-Sen.
The prisons have to be opened for regular inspections by the independent
Observatory Committees and the necessary recommendations that are in their
reports have to be implemented immediately.
5. In relation to the abolition of anti-democratic institutions and laws
such as the DGM's (State Security Courts) and the Anti-Terror-Law, which is
not only demanded by us political prisoners but also by all democratic
forces, the political prisoners and democratic forces and public opinion
have to be given a guarantee regarding this.
6. The punishment of the prisoners who received severe mental and
physically damage during both the hunger strike-death fast resistance in
1996 and today's death fast resistance and during the operations carried
out in the prisons, and those who for whom
there's no possibility of medical treatment in the prisons and who are very
ill, has to be cancelled with the compliance of the Prosecutor of the
Republic. This has to be done without there being an examination by the
forensic medics whose arbitrary and subjective diagnosis has made receiving
medical treatment impossible.
7. The massacres in the prisons, beginning from the operation of 19th
December 2000, and including those in Buca, mraniye, Diyarbakir, Ulucanlar
and Burdur, have to be investigated by commissions consisting of
independent institutions of independent democratic mass organisations and
professional chambers and also the Parliamentary Human Rights Commission.
There must be
guarantees that there will not be any restrictions regarding their reports
and they have to be made public and those who are identified as being
responsible have to be taken before the courts and punished. Our demands
are fully just, legitimate, democratic and humane. Against all of the lies,
demagogues and distortions our demands are not unacceptable. In order to
fulfill our demands, and to negotiate and to find a solution, there must be
unconditional negotiations with representatives who are chosen by the
prisoners by their own free will.
Signed by Ercan Kartal, Cemal akmak, Muharrem Kurfiun, Hac Demirkaya,
Yunus Aydemir, Can Ali Trkmen, M. Aytun Altay, Nizamettin Doan, Ramazan
Sadkolu, Ziya Bykfik, the political prisoners from the DHKP-C,
TKP(ML), TKP, TKP/ML, MLKP, TKB, TDP, DY, DH, PKK/DS, MLSPB trials.
14th June 2001
STATEMENT ENDS
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