AMED - According to the report of ÖHD and MED TUHAD-FED, prisoners were subjected to numerous violations of rights in 2024, including beatings, strip searches, reverse handcuffs, mouth searches, prevention of access to health care and ban on Kurdish language.
Association of Lawyers for Freedom (ÖHD) and Med Federation of Legal and Solidarity Associations of Families of Prisoners and Detainees(MED TUHAD-FED) reported the violations of fundamental rights in prisons. The report titled "Rights Violations in Prisons in Turkey in 2024" was shared with a written statement. In the report, which was prepared in line with the visits to 91 prisons during the year, violations of rights in prisons were described in general terms. Violations such as beatings, strip searches, reverse handcuffs, mouth searches, intolerance to Kurdish language were at the forefront of the report.
The report aims to ensure the protection of human rights, to prevent human rights violations, to carry out the necessary examinations and researches on human rights and to report the results to the competent authorities. The report also aims to make the necessary legal applications and criminal complaints to local and international mechanisms.
The report stated that the Administrative and Observation Boards asked prisoners questions not related to the execution such as "What do you think about PKK, what do you think about Abdullah Öcalan" and "Is PKK a terrorist organization?" and that prisoners were not allowed to benefit from their right to conditional release on arbitrary grounds. It is stated in the report that prisoners were subjected to disciplinary penalties on various grounds, prisoners were subjected to torture and ill-treatment such as "beatings", "strip search", "reverse handcuffs", insults, and prisoners were subjected to beatings and force by wardens during visits.
HUNGER STRIKE ACTIONS
It is stated in the report that the attitude towards the prisoners who went on a hunger strike on 27 November 2023 and ended their hunger strike on 4 April 2024 has hardened and the pressure in prison has increased, ward searches have become more frequent and provocative behaviours have been displayed by the wardens. It is also stated that prisoners on hunger strike were given various "disciplinary penalties" such as single confinement. "Disciplinary investigations, which are used as a pressure mechanism against prisoners on hunger strike, must be abandoned," report stated.
DEMANDS
The report lists the demands and actions to be taken as follows:
"* Considering the peanl and international legislation together with the universal principes of law; the practices and actions that cause violations of the right ot access to health and treatment, the right to freedom and security of person, the right to freedom of communication, freedom of expression, the right to respect for private life, especially the prohibition of Ill-Treatment and Torture, the right to respect for private life, which were determined as a result of the applications received by our institutions and the interviews conducted, must be terminated and the administration must fulfil its positive obligations.
* Type Y and Type S prisons must be closed and other prisons should be made compatible with human rights and dignity.
* All practices contrary to human dignity such as strip searches, mouth searches, and isolation must be abandoned as soon as possible. Handcuffed medical examinations and handcuffed travelling in ring cars must be stopped.
* Permanent arrangements should be made to prevent new violations of rights by taking into consideration the violation decisions of the Constitutional Court and the European Court of Human Rights on many issues such as transfer, disciplinary penalties, right to communication.
* The Regulation on Observation and Classification Centres and on the Evaluation of Convicts, which causes the prevention of conditional releases, should be repealed and the principle of favourable law must be applied.
* Before determining the current 'good behaviour' criteria, the conditions of the convicts in prison must be determined fairly, and the physical and social conditions of prisons must be created in accordance with human dignity before making a 'good behaviour' assessment.
* Since persons imprisoned under discriminatory laws such as the 'Anti-Terror Law' are not 'criminals who need to be rehabilitated', penal laws and judgements, as well as execution laws, must move away from the logic of enemy criminal law.
* 'Independent' inspection mechanisms must be established as required by national and international law in order to monitor the conditions of seriously ill prisoners in prisons and to prevent other violations of rights, torture practices and tools of oppression that are increasingly deepening.
* The European Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT), the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Justice, TİHEK and the Human Rights Investigation Commission of the Grand National Assembly of Turkey should not remain insensitive to the rights violations in prisons and should take action."