From: Press Agency Ozgurluk <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Thu, 28 Jun 2001 01:11:59 +0200 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [Ozgurluk] CNN/AP: Turkish Prison Death Toll Rises Tuesday June 26 2:28 PM ET Turkish Prison Death Toll Rises ISTANBUL, Turkey (AP) - A prisoner starved to death Tuesday, becoming the 25th person to die in an eight-month hunger strike by Turkish prisoners and their relatives to protest a new maximum-security prison system. Aysun Bozdogan, 25, died at a hospital in Istanbul, the prisoners solidarity group Ozgur Tayad said. Bozdogan was a member of the outlawed Turkish Communist Party-Leninist, and had been in Istanbul's Kartal prison since 1999. Bozdogan was one of over 200 political prisoners who have been fasting to protest their transfers from large, dormitory-style prisons to new maximum-security prisons with one or three-person cells. Clashes broke out in December when security forces transferred inmates to the new prisons, leaving 30 inmates and two soldiers dead. Some prisoners' relatives have also joined the fast. The hunger strikers have been taking sugared and salted water with vitamins to prolong their fast. Inmates say the new prisons leave them isolated and vulnerable to abuse by guards. The government insists there can be no return to the old system of wards holding up to 100 prisoners - a system, officials say, that enabled Kurdish, leftist and Islamic groups to use the wards as training centers. Turkey's parliament has passed a law allowing inmates in the small cells to take part in some collective activities, and the government has also allowed civilian inspection of prisons. But Amnesty International and other human rights groups say the government's response does not go far enough. Some European countries have also pressed Turkey to take measures to end the fast. -- Press Agency Ozgurluk In Support of the Revolutionary Peoples Liberation Struggle in Turkey http://www.ozgurluk.org _________________________________________________ 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] __________________________________________________
