Prisoners demands

[dhkcbureau]

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. 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. 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 traveling 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, type writers and cassette recorders which are necessary articles for daily use. 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 defense” 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 defense must end. 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. The right of the prisoners to be represented has to be recognized and practiced. The sentenced prisoners and those awaiting trial have to stay in the same common areas. 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 defense. 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 defense 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, T�YAB and T�m 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 hungerstrike-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 Kur�un, Hac� Demirkaya, Yunus Aydemir, Can Ali T�rkmen, M. Aytun� Altay, Nizamettin Do�an, Ramazan Sad�ko�lu, Ziya B�y�k���k, the political prisoners from the DHKP-C, TKP(ML), TK�P, TKP/ML, MLKP, T�KB, TDP, DY, DH, PKK/D�S, MLSPB trials. 14th June 2001