The Bar Association, ÖHD (Association of Lawyers for Freedom), and TUAY-DER in Amed (Diyarbakır) released a report on rights violations in prisons, covering the period from June to August.
The report covering prisons in Amed, Elazığ, Erzincan and Erzurum highlighted issues such as denial of release, violations of the right to health, forced strip searches, the obstruction of correspondence in Kurdish, and gender-based violence against female prisoners.
Rihan Gök, a member of the Amed Bar Association Prison Monitoring Commission, stated that isolation policies in prisons target hopes for social peace, saying, “These practices, which aim to suppress democratic politics, social opposition, and the desire for peace, deeply damage not only individuals but also the mental, social, and moral fabric of society.”
Gök stated, “The prerequisite for democratization and lasting social peace is to confront the truth and settle with the policies of denial, violence, and annihilation of the past. Without this confrontation, neither justice, social security nor true peace would be possible. Today, while prisons are used as ‘silencing spaces’, in reality, obedience is being imposed on the whole of society and democratic social life is being systematically weakened.”
The report called for the release of seriously ill prisoners, an end to arbitrary prevention of releases, recognition of the right to communicate in all mother languages, and guarantees against torture.
The report also emphasized that the Administration and Monitoring Boards were preventing releases by imposing “repentance requirements.”
The report’s key demands included the following:
– The unconditional lifting of isolation on Abdullah Öcalan,
– An end to systematic torture and ill-treatment in prisons,
– The implementation of independent monitoring mechanisms,
– The guarantee of the right to health.
Abdulkadir Güleç, President of the Amed Bar Association, emphasized that the violations have created despair among the public and that securing the rights of prisoners is an urgent need.