| EMHRN - Home > PUBLICATIONS > EMHRN Publications > F-Type Prison Crisis in Turkey (2001) |
|
The F-Type Prison Crisis and the Repression of Human Rights Defenders in Turkey
|
Report from a fact-finding mission to Istanbul and Ankara on 5-11 May 2001 with Updates (Published by the EMHRN, Kurdish Human Rights Project and the World Organisation Against Torture - OMCT). To date, the death toll in Turkey’s current F-type prisons crisis stands at 72 dead with hundreds more either seriously wounded or tortured during and since the December 2000 military actions which took place in 20 prisons throughout Turkey. Added to these numbers are an estimated 200 or more either close to death or in acute states of mental and physical deterioration – both in prison and in the "death fast houses" of a small Istanbul neighbourhood – who have been on prolonged hunger strikes and death fasts against Turkey’s new isolation cells for what is exactly one year now. In addition, there are the related deaths of six people who were killed in two suicide bomb incidents in protest against the F-type prisons in January 2001 and September 2001 in Istanbul.
Given the urgency of the rising numbers of dead and the severe and potentially permanent physical and mental damage being wreaked on those undergoing death fasts and hunger strikes, the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Network, the Kurdish Human Rights Project and the World Organisation Against Torture sent an observer mission to Ankara and Istanbul in May 2001 in order to investigate the extent of the crisis and explore ways in which this crisis could be effectively mediated and resolved as quickly as possible.
Available only in English.
|
