Human Rights Association (İHD) members, activists and executives shall continue to struggle against human rights violations by keeping in their mind that only human rights principles and public conscience protect them…
Being a human rights defender is a challenging and risky activism. It is more challenging and risky in countries like Turkey where fundamental democracy principles have yet to be internalised. In this regard, many IHD members, activists and executives have been subjected to serious pressure and attacks since it was established in 1986.
İHD insistently points out that serious human rights and democracy problems particularly the Kurdish question. Our association has been struggling against any and every forms of human rights violations resulted from the State policies, which insists on violence-based “solution”, and paid a heavy price for this struggle.
Mr. Erdal Özakçil, Mr. Yavuz Karabudak and Mr. Hamit Ateş who are our activists and executives of İHD Erzurum Branch were arrested on 4 February and then detained. Our friends’ human activities for prisoners’ rights and general human rights situation are shown as the reason for their detention. The activists and executives of the İHD Erzurum Branch have been carrying out activities for prisoners’ rights and as a result of these activities they show the real situation in the prison there. Moreover, they were stopped by 5 complimentary inspectors and given a traffic ticket. There has been an attempt to prevent our friends’ activities for a long time. Their detention proven that we are right about our concerns, there are people who are unhappy with our activities.
We underline that the detention of our activities, who carry out no illegal but human rights activities, is unacceptable. Pre-trial detention should be an exception while trial without being detained should be the rule. However, this universal principle is reversed in Turkey. It is clear that the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the Article 102 of the Code of Criminal Procedure is totally against the objective of detention and is used as a punishment tool. This fact shows there is no judicial organ that is in harmony with the rule of law in Turkey. Moreover, the pre-trial detention of our friends, who are not charged with any violent offence, shows a negative attitude, approach to human rights. On the other hand, judicial members should support and facilitate human rights activities. The Ministry of Interior Affairs’ Circular No 2004/139 carries The Declaration on human rights defenders requires this support and facilitation. However, Turkey-as it always does-insists on ignoring its international obligations.
Our detained friends have carried out their human rights and democracy struggle on a legal, legitimate base. We will pick their struggle up and maintain it with the same determination as they have carried out.
We reiterate that we will support any steps in favour of human rights and democracy without any reservation. However, we would like to underline that we-as human rights defenders, activists and more generally democracy forces-will not surrender to these liquidation policies. Therefore, we will do our best to inform all human rights defenders, democracy forces in Turkey and in the world about the detention of our friends and keep their detention on the agenda of human rights movement. We will ask the international human rights movement to show solidarity, to support our friends. We will improve our detained friends’ struggle.
We reiterate our call:
Our detained friends must be immediately released.
HUMAN RIGHTS ASSOCIATION (İHD)