Dear Press Members;
Recently, the violations in the prisons present in East and SouthEast Anatolia Region are getting increased continuously.The disregard and apathy to the problems of the imprisoned and the apprehended – such as ill-treatment and the torture implementations; the arbitrary behaviours of the prison administration; being isoleted from the outside world because of politicial views; to sleep at floor because of over capacity of holding the imprisoned – is getting increased.
The continuously increasing of ill-treatment and arbitrary behaviours in the prisons and the over capacity of wards turn it to cruety for the imprisoned to pay their penalty. Although they imprison the imprisoned and the apprehended to decarcerate them, unfortunately there aren’t humanistic circumstances for them to pay penalty.
Recently, a new event is added to these savage implementations: The imprisoned and the apprehended who are speking with their families in Kurdish on phones and the ones speaking in Kurdish on their visits , their phone calls and visits are interrupted. We got hundreds of applications from the region prisons about this repressive implementation. And in some prisons it is bounded arbitrarily to let to bring the Kurdish daily newspaper Azadiya Welat and Kurdish poet, novel and story books to inside.
Dear Press Members;
The attempts against these arbitrary and unlawful implementations have had no replies. At the end of the submitted applications to the the Chairmanship of the Commission of Human Rights Observation of the Turkish National Assembly, we are replied with the Article 88/p of Guideline for The Administration Departments of Correction and Execution of Punishment and Security Measures which defines that “The phone calls are Turkish. But if the prisoner doesn’t know Turkish or the visitors, who he will speak with in visits, are determined that they don’t know Turkish after an investigation in their location ,only after that they will be let to speak.”.
This procedure is against to national and supranational rules, orders and humanitarian law. A person should speak with any language with his/her visitors. İt is an savage treatment that the spoken language is arranged with guidelines by the Ministry of Judge and it is bound to several investigations, observations, the convince of the security forces who investigate the issue and only after all of that apply the procedure with an positive report. Even the condition of not knowing Turkish is proof of the exist of pressure.
Actually, these difficult procedures and the prohibition of Kurdish language evidently reflects the view of the state to Kurdish. The warning of not speaking in another language is a prohibition to Kurdish. Kurdish people is a fact of this country. İt reflects the repressive mindset evidently to compel the peoples of a multicultural, multilanguaged and multireligioned geography like Anatolia to deny their languages and communicate only with a language.
Dear Press Members;
The speech of politicians in Kurdish, the invititations pressed in Kurdish by the Mayors, the books and posters are subjected to inquries and got punishments. On behalf of Human Rights Association we want to declare that it is wrong to prohibit the languages and where they can be spoken or not through the guidelines.Now, everbody knows that nobody abandones their languages easily. There are almost 20 million Kurdish people in Turkey and they never abandoned their language and they won’t too. İf a person abandone his/her languages, it means he/she abandone everything. To prohibit a native language of a person is the most condemned implementation by the universal humanitarian law.
Language, is a fundamental element for human identity. Both individually and in the sense of expressing ourselves by means of relation to the society, makes a basic reference point.The native language is an inseparable part of human identity. The education on native language is one of the fundamental human rights.
We employ our language to express profound structure codes, we find in our experiences. Everything we say, everything that all the people of the world say, basically expresses a coded, subjective situation in our brains and it is bounded according to the grammar in the black box on the surface. Thus, language is not only a means of communication, but also it is the basic measure to communicate robustly and to take pleasure from life. In a language foreign to us, it is a fact that even if we know the language, we may not be able to communicate and express our matters well.
Dear Press Members;
We have demands as; the imprisoned and the apprehended mustn’t be bounded when they speak in Kurdish with their families on the phone and when they are visited by their families, too; the Kurdish newspaper and Kurdish books should be allowed to enter to prison; these implementations that are products of repressive mindset must be abandoned; the Article 88 of Guideline that prohibit Kurdish should be repealed; the social rights that aren’t allowed to be used due to arbitrary treatments in prisons must be reinstated; the applications on ill-treatment and torture mustn’t be ignored; the imprisoned and the apprehended who are very ill should be forgiven for a better treat and the control of the prisons by non-governmental organisations must be allowed.
Yours sincerely
Muharrem Erbey, Lawyer
The Chairman of Branch