From: Press Agency Ozgurluk <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Sat, 1 Sep 2001 12:06:55 +0200 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [Ozgurluk] Guardian: Turkish jail protester's final sacrifice Turkish jail protester's final sacrifice 32nd hunger striker dies as prison crisis deepens Chris Morris in Istanbul Saturday September 1, 2001 The Guardian A woman of 39 died in Istanbul yesterday, the latest to succumb to the long-running hunger strike in protest at conditions in Turkish jails. Hulya Simsek, who had been imprisoned for membership of an outlawed leftwing group, had refused food for 286 days. Relatives and supporters of prisoners are joining the hunger strike almost daily, though other relatives bitterly resent the deaths, since conditions are unchanged and police action against the hunger strikers and supporters is growing. Thirty-two people have starved to death since March, and more than 100 others have been permanently disabled. The government and the hunger strikers are locked in a battle of attrition which has dragged on for nearly a year. International pressure for a compromise has been minimal, and most Turks, immersed in their own economic problems, are paying little attention. The ministry of justice said this week that more than 200 prisoners were still taking part in the protest, most of them on a self-proclaimed "death fast". About 20 of their relatives and supporters are also on hunger strike. If anything, attitudes are hardening. The protesters, many of whom advocate the violent overthrow of the state, are living and dying on the outer fringe of Turkey's political spectrum. A group of activists, the Turkish Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist), has set up another "house of death" in an Istanbul suburb, where four men are on hunger strike. Two of them are prisoners on conditional release for health reasons. They will go back to jail in December, if they are still alive. One of them, Tekin Yildiz, can barely walk after fasting in his prison cell for months. Once again he is taking only water, fruit juice, tea and vitamins. "If we continue like this", he said, "we can never be defeated". The focus of the protest is the transfer of prisoners from large dormitory wards to small cells, where they are often kept in isolation. The justice minister, Hikmet Sami Turk, says the new prisons are modern and clean, but prisoners and their lawyers complain that brutality is still routine. A leading lawyer, Ercan Kanar, made a formal judicial complaint after inmates in one of the new prisons, Kandira, said conditions had deteriorated in the past few weeks. He said the prison was a place of "torture, beating and degrading treatment". Mr Sami Turk has promised that monitoring councils will be set up next month to give non-governmental organisations a supervisory role in the prison system. But he believes there are few problems. "Claims of solitary confinement or maltreatment are not true", he said this week. "Let the reality be known, and let no one put their life at risk for the wrong cause". But this has already become an ideological conflict. The bitter determination to pursue the hunger strike at any cost was confirmed by a series of raids on prisons last December in which 30 inmates died. The raids were supposed to end the protest, but they simply made things worse. The government said at the time that some of the prisoners had died after setting themselves on fire. But a subsequent report by forensic pathologists, which became public last month, paints a different picture. It said that paramilitary police used huge quantities of teargas and nerve gas at Bayrampasa prison in Istanbul, where 12 inmates died. Six women in one ward were burnt to death after the gas caught fire. Other prisoners were killed by gunfire from surrounding buildings. The report suggests that, contrary to government claims, there was no gunfire from the prisoners themselves. "After the massacre, we could never give up. It would be an insult to those who died," Diren Kirkoc said in her hospital bed in Istanbul. Ms Kirkoc took part in the hunger strike for nearly six months until she was given a temporary release on medical grounds. She has tuberculosis, kidney problems and partial paralysis on her left side. She was convicted of painting placards for an illegal left-wing organisation when she was 16, and sentenced to six and a half years in prison. She too expects to return to jail in December, when she says she will refuse food again. Other former hunger strikers have emerged from their cells with the mental age of small children, and doctors fear hundreds of people will never recover from the battering their minds and bodies have taken in recent months. The hunger strikers have been taking vitamin B1 to try to maintain their strength, and many have been fasting in shifts to prolong their lives. The government calls the hunger strike a pointless exercise, but on both sides there is a stubborn determination not to give in. Would-be mediators say they are very pessimistic. Without concerted international pressure there is no prospect of anything breaking the deadlock. The Council of Europe, of which Turkey is a member, has paid little sustained attention, even though this is the kind of issue which falls into its remit. "I think the Turkish authorities feel they have won this one," Jonathan Sugden of Human Rights Watch said. "And that means they will carry on running the prisons how they like." -- Press Agency Ozgurluk In Support of the Revolutionary Peoples Liberation Struggle in Turkey http://www.ozgurluk.org _________________________________________________ KOMINFORM P.O. 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