Keskin: The prison administration is responsible for Garibe’s death!

The suspicious death of Garibe Gezer in a solitary cell in Kandra No. 1 F Type Prison raised attention to the prison’s harsh isolation system.

Gezer, who has been kept in horrible conditions in Kandıra Prison for 7 months after being transferred there, was tortured and sexually abused by the prison personnel when she opposed to this arbitrary procedure. Eren Keskin, Co-Chair of the Human Rights Association (IHD), spoke to ANF after going to prison and filing a criminal case as soon as she learned about the abuse that Gezer told her family.

“GARIBE WAS A WOMAN WHO DID NOT BOW DOWN”

Explaining that Gezer was a very strong woman, Keskin said: “She was continually expressing her demands and complaints to the officers in my presence when I met her in prison a month ago.  In this respect, Garibe was a woman who was well aware of her rights and refused to bow down.”

Keskin said that Garibe is the daughter of a family that has undergone immense grief and anguish, like many Kurdish families, and that one of her brothers was assassinated, another was wounded and remained paralyzed in an attack by state troops, and another is in prison.

“The isolation system in jails is already a torture method,” Keskin added, pointing out that Gezer was detained in considerably harsher conditions. Garibe was being held there and reacted against it. She was often voicing her uneasiness. She mentioned another 20-day isolation sentence in her last phone call with her sister last week. To begin with, the reasons for these disciplinary and solitary punishments are so inhumane that they are only used when you object to the wrong done to you. Naturally , she did not want to accept this sentence, ”she said.

NO RESPECT EVEN AFTER DEATH!

Expressing that they were waiting for the autopsy report to identify the exact reason of the suspicious death, Keskin said: “Suicide or murder, she was under the state’s ‘protection.’ I also put protection in inverted commas because, since this is a jail, the administration is ultimately accountable for her death. Even if Garibe committed suicide, it was the system of seclusion and harassment that led her to do so.”

Keskin stated that they will show the Forensic Medicine Institute’s autopsy report to forensic medicine professors they trust and that they will follow this case until the end.

Keskin, reacting to the fact that Garibe Gezer’s body was not even provided a funeral vehicle and that the women who attempted to carry the coffin were stopped by police, added: “Unfortunately, the disrespect she experienced while she was alive continues even after death.”

Keskin emphasized that these events have no place in any religion or ideology, and they also have no place in the Geneva Convention on the Law of War, to which Turkey is a party.

Keskin said that they will exercise all of their rights under both domestic and international law in this matter.

Keskin, who was overcome with grief, shared her final memory of Garibe Gezer. “The last time I visited the prison, there were two glass rooms side by side, and I talked to both Garibe and Aysel Tuğluk. They greeted me. When I looked into their eyes, I saw that they were greeting each other warmly. That image will stay with me forever.”

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