Demirtas letter cites Turkey's prison conditions for start of hunger strikes

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — A letter was published from imprisoned Kurdish political leader Selahattin Demirtas explaining why he and other Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) members decided to begin a hunger strike.

 

Demirtas, the party’s co-chair, said the decision was undertaken “to the unlawful, inhumane and arbitrary practices taking place in prisons in Turkey.”

 

Earlier this month responding to similar allegations, Turkey’s foreign ministry objected to the reliability of the information that such accusations have been based on.

 

Demirtas’ letter sent through his lawyers and published on Friday states:

 

‘As Members of Parliament, We Have No Personal Demand Whatsoever…’

 

Whether ordinary or political, all arrestees and prisoners have the right to humane treatment in detention.

 

We want to draw attention to the unlawful, inhumane and arbitrary practices taking place in prisons in Turkey. It is because of these issues that there are a series of hunger strikes continuing for over 40 days in many prisons across Turkey.

 

It is not possible for us to accept the persistent indifference of the Ministry of Justice to these serious issues in its own field of responsibility.

 

As members of parliament, we have no personal demand whatsoever. We are on hunger strike to draw attention to the widespread hunger strikes and problems in prisons, to remind the Ministry of Justice of its responsibility and in particular, to protest the arbitrary practices of the Edirne Prison Director.

 

Selahattin Demirtas

 

Peoples’ Democratic Party Co-Chair

 

Edirne Prison

 

31 March 2017

 

Thirteen HDP lawmakers, including the party co-chairs and their deputies, are currently in jail in Turkey.

 

A delegation of members of the European Parliament, the Council Europe, academics and journalists said they were blocked from visiting Demirtas in February.

 

The delegation had requested permission from Turkish authorities to visit jailed HDP members and imprisoned Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan.

 

“It’s very important for those of us who believe in democracy to be here to fight for better democracy in Turkey,” Julie Ward, a member of the European Parliament from England, told Rudaw outside Edirne Prison. “We can’t see how the Turkish state can be existing in the 21st century unless it is prepared to uphold the principles of freedom and democracy that we uphold in our own countries.”

 

The BBC published stories of victims claiming beatings and sexual abuses in Turkish prisons in November 2016, allegedly committed against coup participants and those accused of "support for terrorism."

 

The media reports came after the international human rights organization Amnesty Organization published similar findings after speaking to lawyers, doctors, and a detention facility staff member.

 

“Reports of abuse including beatings and rape in detention are extremely alarming, especially given the scale of detentions that we have seen in the past week. The grim details that we have documented are just a snapshot of the abuses that might be happening in places of detention,” stated Amnesty’s Europe director John Dalhuisen in the July 2016 report.

 

"It is absolutely imperative that the Turkish authorities halt these abhorrent practices and allow international monitors to visit all these detainees in the places they are being held.”

 

Turkey’s foreign ministry described a similar yearly 2016 report by the United Nations human rights office as relying on “biased, incorrect” information and “far from professional.”

 

"We do not accept the unfounded allegations in the report which correspond exactly to the terrorist group's propaganda," it said, adding the report was a clear violation of the UN’s impartiality and objectivity.

 

A Turkish court sentenced Demirtas to five months in jail on February 21 for “insulting Turkish nation, the state of Turkish Republic and public organs and institutions,” Anadolu Agency reported, citing a judicial source.

It previously was reported that prosecutors recommended in an indictment that Demirtas and HDP co-chair Figen Yuksekdag, should serve 43 to 142 and 30 to 83 years in prison, respectively, in line with the scope of a “terror case.”