From: Press Agency Ozgurluk <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Sat, 6 Jan 2001 01:41:37 +0100 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: "[Ozgurluk.Org]" Turkish State Closes Human Rights Group ANKARA, Turkey (AP) - Turkey has shut down four branches of the country's leading human rights group after some of its members launched hunger strikes in sympathy with left-wing prisoners, the group's president said Friday. The closing of the offices of the Human Rights Association came as leftist prisoners pressed forward with a hunger strike to protest a government plan to move prisoners from large wards to small cells. Prisoners say they fear they will be more vulnerable to abuse in the smaller cells. Last month, soldiers stormed 20 prisons to break up hunger strikes by the inmates. Some 30 inmates and two soldiers died in the raids. Police closed down Human Rights Association's offices in the western port city of Izmir - Turkey's third-largest city, central Konya and Van and Gaziantep, both in the Kurdish-dominated southeast. Members of those offices were the ones who launched the sympathy strikes and also possessed posters against the new prisons. ``These raids are aimed at hampering our efforts for defending human rights and freedoms,'' said Husnu Ondul, the group's president. Authorities accused the organization of supporting outlawed groups, which is illegal. Most of the inmates belonged to the Revolutionary People's Liberation Party-Front, a Marxist group that claimed responsibility for a suicide attack on a police station this week. Some 400 prisoners are continuing the hunger strikes. -- Press Agency Ozgurluk In Support of the Revolutionary Peoples Liberation Struggle in Turkey http://www.ozgurluk.org DHKC: http://www.ozgurluk.org/dhkc _________________________________________________ KOMINFORM P.O. Box 66 00841 Helsinki Phone +358-40-7177941 Fax +358-9-7591081 http://www.kominf.pp.fi General class struggle news: [EMAIL PROTECTED] subscribe mails to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Geopolitical news: [EMAIL PROTECTED] subscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] __________________________________________________
