Renounce Impunity for Peace!
5 January 2024
The Central Executive Board of the Human Rights Association passed a resolution in September 2022 to start Peace Vigils. On the occasion of its 16th vigil, the association reiterates its demands and recommendations for the solution of chronic problems that prevent reconciliation in Turkey hoping that it gains more strength with the support of stakeholders in its struggle for rights and peace. Such support and solidarity consolidate its belief and hope for peace. On this occasion, the association thanks all its friends who support the demand for peace.
This is an era in which basic human rights have long been ignored in Turkey, specifically in the Kurdish geography for a very long time, violations of the right to life and the prohibition of torture and ill-treatment have become routine, the number of violations of the rights of prisoners is increasing day by day, and democratic values and principles are suspended. The unlawful and anti-democratic practices people are dealing with, together with the challenging conditions, deepen the obstacles before rights defenders and aggravate the responsibility they bear. Yet, these challenging conditions strengthen the society’s desire for peace and a just legal order. Considering that this desire can only be realized through powerful solidarity and demand for peace by the whole society, the İHD invites all social groups to contribute to the demand for peace raised by rights defenders.
İHD believes that a large part of the rights violations identified in the struggle for rights stems from the stalemate in the resolution of the Kurdish issue. In Turkey, many gross human rights violations such as unsolved political murders and enforced disappearances in custody, especially those in the 90s, the loss of lives in the nearly forty years of conflict, acts of torture and ill-treatment both in and out of detention centers, and inhumane acts to which prisoners are subjected, continue systematically. The victims of the ongoing conflict, brought about by the failure to resolve the Kurdish issue through democratic means and methods, have sometimes been a 70-year-old woman who wanted to exercise her freedom of expression, sometimes an 18-month-old baby who was unaware of what was happening in the world, and sometimes rights defenders whose sole aim was to protect and promote human rights. In Turkey, the judicial authorities have finalized investigations without due diligence and a very long time after the facts in the vast majority of investigations and lawsuits initiated by public prosecutors’ offices into rights violations committed by persons in positions of public power.
In criminal cases filed due to the violations suffered by citizens during the conflict period caused by the unresolved Kurdish issue, the ethnic identities and political views of the victims took precedence over the trials, and public officials who were perpetrators either did not face punishment corresponding to the acts they committed on the grounds of “the sensitive situation of the region” or were protected with the armor of impunity by applying upper limit reductions in the sentences they received.
Decisions of the judicial authorities to dismiss cases on the grounds of statute of limitations are among the most prominent examples of the practice of impunity, the institutionalization of which has been pointed out by rights defenders and human rights lawyers for many years. It should be noted that the dismissal rulings handed down in symbolic cases such as the Lice Massacre Case, the Vartinis Case, the Sivas Madımak Case, the Musa Anter Case, which were filed against some of the gross human rights violations committed in the 90s, due to the fact that 30 years have passed since the cases in question, have no legitimate aspect in terms of human rights law. This is because the events in the aforementioned cases and the gross violations of human rights in dozens of other cases are defined by international law as crimes against humanity because they are crimes committed by a certain group against a certain group within a certain systematic. Despite the universal rule of law putting forth that the statute of limitations cannot be applied to crimes against humanity, these rulings rendered by the Turkish judiciary with the aim of leaving the perpetrators unpunished not only prevent access to justice for those whose rights have been violated but also encourage the public officials who were involved in such violations to commit crimes. It should be emphasized that these rulings are one of the obstacles to building peace and reconciliation in Turkey because impunity granted to the perpetrators of gross human rights violations in these and similar incidents, which took place in the past and whose effects are still ongoing, by the judiciary, prevents citizens from imagining a safe future.
On the occasion of this month’s Peace Vigil, İHD reiterates that the only solution to all the crises that the society is currently facing is to provide reconciliation. The first step to establishing peace and reconciliation is to face the grave human rights violations of the past, to abandon pro-security policies that will lead to similar violations, and to establish effective, fair and independent judicial mechanisms.
Finally, to ensure lasting peace and reconciliation we say:
RENOUNCE IMPUNITY FOR PEACE!
WE ARE COMMITTED TO DEFENDING THE RIGHT TO PEACE.
Human Rights Association