Turkey: No to the F-type prisons! Free all political prisoners!

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No to the F-type prisons!
Free all political prisoners!

Again two political prisoners died in a turkish F-type prison, after an hunger strike lasting more than 150 days. The hunger strike began last year as a protest against the planned transfer of the political prisoners to the F-type prisons. The aim of the government was to dissolve the collectives of the prisoners and to destroy the resistance within the prison walls by this way. The hunger strike caused problems for the turkish government and rose the political pressure to negotiate with the strikers. But as the government would not leave its position of transferring the prisoners to the isolation cells, and the hunger strike would not end without any outcome in favour of the prisoners and their forms of organisation in the prisons, the government decided to attack the revolutionaries by pure pyhsical violence and started last december the massacre called hypocrisly "Back to life". The prisons were bombed and burnt, prisoners were taken by force to the new F-type prisons. Duri!
!
ng the operation 30 prisoners were murdered., many were injured and tortured, but nevertheless the hunger strike, that became a death fast, continued.

The step that was undertaken by the turkish government did not have, although it was condemned by human rights organisations from all over the world, any real impact on the position Turkey takes on the global scale. Still it is a very important NATO-partner and for the USA a strategic partner for their militäry force in this region. It is  through the control of the rivers Euphrat and Tigris the key to threat Iraq by stealing the water. All this shows once more the hypocrisis of the so-called defenders of democracy and human rights, who work together and support activly the turkish government, which is guilty of the worst human rights violations and far away from democracy.

While the burtal injustice in the prisons continues, the social situation is getting worse. The turkish Lira lost 30 per cent of its worth compared to the US-dollar. The high and quick risings of prices were followed by demonstrations and protests of angry people who could not afford the most essential goods anymore. The only condition the International Monetary Fund and the G-8 States have, which Turkey has already promised to fulfill, does not concern the human rights situation but reforms in the turkish economy. If the re-structuring of the turkish economy under the principles of globalisation is fullfilled, high investments and economic aid are promised by the international finance organisations.

Again it could not be shown more openly, what the real principles of the democratic western hemisphere and its globalisation are: Neither human rights nor social rights are important, the only parameter that counts, is the economic outcome the western countries and their allies have by exploiting the masses.

It is obviously that the EU will not wait until the human rights conditions become better to let Turkey become a member. The main barrier for Turkey to take a step nearer to the EU are not their criminal actions against social, democratic and leftist organisations as well as against national minorities, but the economic instability and weakness of the country.

We condemn strongly the repression in the prisons and call for an immediate fullfilling of all the demands of the political prisoners by the turkish government. We express our strongest solidarity with the relatives of the prisoners, the democratic lawyers and all those who work against the official media, that spreads the government propaganda, and call upon the turkish government to stop immediately the repression and the terror against democratic organisations and persons.

10.4.2001



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