From: Tabe Kooistra (tabe@ozgurluk.xs4all.nl)
Date: 29 Jul 2001 02:20 uur
Thursday July 26, 11:44 PM
Turkish minister accused of 'police state' over prison crisis
ISTANBUL, July 26 (AFP) -
A senior Turkish deputy accused Justice Minister Hikmet Sami
Turk on Thursday of running a police state in his handling of the
country's prison crisis, which has claimed the lives of more than 60
people, the Anatolia news agency reported.
"It's a great misfortune that Turkey has a justice minister who
commits legal errors and disowns declarations made in the name
of the state," said Sema Piskinsut, a former head of the country's
parliamentary commission on human rights.
"The people expect a justice minister who serves a legal state not
a police state," she said.
A hunger strike against planned new prisons has so far claimed the
lives of 29 prisoners and members of their families.
The new jails will have smaller cells, which campaigners say will
make harassment and even torture at the hands of prison guards
more widespread.
Turkish security forces stormed 20 prisons in December in an effort
to break the strike in raids which resulted in the killing of a further
30 prisoners and two police officers.
However the protests have not stopped the new style three-person
cells being brought in to replace the older dormitory prisons, which
hold up to 60 prisoners in a single room.
But in a minor concession, Turkey has said it will not build any
more of the controversial jails once its current building programme
is completed.
Piskinsut's outburst is not her first brush with controversy.
Last year she published a parliamentary report into mistreatment in
Turkey's prisons and police stations, revealing instruments of
torture recovered from surprise raids on jails and police
headquarters.
A state prosecutor recently demanded that Piskinsut's
parliamentary immunity be lifted so she could face charges for
withholding evidence after she refused to reveal the identity of
prisoners who had denounced acts of torture against those in the
country's jails.
"These are political allegations," Piskinsut said in the Turkish
newspaper Cumhuriyet on Thursday, adding that the report had
been edited by several other members of the parliamentary
commission and was published over a year ago.
But in the same edition, Justice Minister Turk seemed to support
the state prosecutor, saying that those claiming to have suffered
torture should be identified and appear before a judge.
Piskinsut is a member of the Party of the Democratic Left of Prime
Minister Bulent Ecevit.
--
Press Agency Ozgurluk In Support of the Revolutionary Peoples
Liberation Struggle in Turkey http://www.ozgurluk.org
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