According to a September 25 report, 13 Kurdish prisoners were killed in a Turkish security forces attack inside the prison of the Kurdish city of Diyarbakir. Many of the dead had suffered severe head injuries. Another 12 prisoners were taken to hospital in a critical condition.
The September 25 statement was released by the president of the Human Rights Association of Diyarbakir, Mahmut Sakar, and reported by the American Kurdish Information Network. It said that in the last 10 days, the dead (and often mutilated) bodies of "nine people [had] been found in the city streets. These individuals were reported missing in our office. The invariable story of their loved ones was that the plain-clothes Turkish police officers came to the house, arrested these individuals and later claimed that they knew nothing of them."
According to one report, the prisoners had been protesting the Turkish government's failure to improve the brutal treatment and living conditions of prisoners, as was agreed in late July to end a 69-day hunger strike. The Turkish military has also been pursuing a bloody offensive against Kurdistan Workers Party fighters in Tunceli province over the last few weeks.
These mass killings illustrate the deterioration of the human rights situation in Turkey, said AKIN. This was also noted, on September 19, by the European Parliament's decision to block "hundreds of millions of dollars of aid to Ankara for reneging on promises to improve its human rights record". AKIN asked for further condemnation of this particular act of brutality and the overall Turkish aggression toward the Kurds.
The Turkish government, heavily influenced by the military-dominated National Security Council, is also pursuing leaders of the only legal Kurdish party, the People's Democracy Party (HADEP). On September 25, 18 were put on trial in Ankara's notorious State Security Court, charged with separatist activity — the same offence with which eight parliamentary deputies from HADEP's banned predecessor, the Democracy Party, were charged. The charge is punishable by death. n