ISOLATION IS CONTINUING TO KILL IN TURKEY
The F-Type prison isolation cells of the European Union, part of the “European standards” which the state in Turkey adopted as a condition of entering the EU, have cost the life of another of our people.
One hundred and five of our people have lost their lives so far in the resistance in Turkey’s prisons to the EU’s F-Type isolation prisons, a resistance which started on October 20, 2000. And in the same resistance, another 500 of our people have been left handicapped.
Yesterday, February 26, DHKP-C prisoner Orhan OGUZ, who was 23 years old, set himself on fire while held in isolation conditions in a one-person cell in Tekirdag F-Type Prison; he did this as a protest against those conditions. Orhan was taken to Haydarpasa Hospital and died there today.
The last thing that Orhan shouted out as he was setting himself on fire was, “Something has to be done!”
Young as he was, Orhan made a great many things clear:
When on November 5, 2001, the state launched an attack in Istanbul’s Kucukarmutlu district against the hunger strikers, killing four people in the attack, Orhan was one of those in the barricades set up to protect those on the Death Fast. He supported the prisoners and was imprisoned himself while struggling against isolation.
On February 26, 2003, he set himself on fire in order to have isolation abolished.
YES INDEED, “SOMETHING HAS TO BE DONE”!
Exactly one hundred and five lives. One hundred and five people have given their lives to put an end to prison isolation. Will those who defend the F-Type prisons, the EU states and institutions who now refer to the F-Types as prison reforms in line with “European standards”, continue to sing the same tune?
The F-Types are not reforms, they are isolation. We have said that isolation constitutes torture and death. And this is the result of it; have 105 people sacrificed their lives for no reason? No, none have died without a reason. Isolation is the reason why our people have lost their lives. The state in Turkey and also the EU bear responsibility for our people who have died or will die in the struggle against isolation.
With our deaths, we shout out to the Turkish state and the EU, who have turned a deaf ear to our cries: isn’t the murder of 105 of our people enough, how many further lives will isolation conditions cost our people?
