DEVRİMCİ HALK KURTULUŞ CEPHESİ
Date: December 2, 2002 Statement: 285
Solitary confinement kills
The 101st death
The fourth death under the AKP government
The title of Statement 284 was The 100th death in the F-Type prisons.
For those who remain blind, deaf and dumb, we provide news about the 101st death in this statement, Statement 285.
And in the same days the prisoners have stated that a 9th Death Fast Team has started the Death Fast… And despite all this the AKP (recently elected Islamist party in Turkey) government does not think it necessary to put this matter on its list of urgent priorities. But they came to office claiming that they would end torture and completely implement rights and freedoms if they entered government.
The fourth death has taken place in the F-Type prisons under the AKP government.
Feridun Yucel Batu carried out the Death Fast in the F-Type prison at Izmir Kiriklar, was transferred to Izmir Ataturk Teaching and Research Hospital where he had been previously, and has become the 101st martyr of the resistance.
What is the AKP waiting for?
Would they really like to do everything possible but are prevented by the MGK (National Security Council)?
Or does the AKP agree with the massacres in the F-Type Prisons just like the 57th government did?
The AKP cannot avoid answering this question.
Put an end to demagogy!
We made this appeal many times when Hikmet Sami Turk (the previous Justice Minister) was in power and committing massacres.
We never tired of publishing the facts.
Sami Turk has gone down in political history as a minister associated with lies and massacres. But even he could no longer repeat his demagogic statements. And with time, even those who supported him at the start over the F-Type prisons no longer had any doubt that he was a liar.
Will the new Justice Minister Cemil Cicek put a stop to prison isolation and massacres or become a copy of Hikmet Sami Turk?
We will receive an answer to this question in the following days.
And if you are really about continuing the practices of the 57th government, the most hated in Turkey’s history, why did you come to power at all?
Nobody should have any doubt that those who continue misery and oppression will garner the same legacy of hatred for themselves.
And resistance in the F-Type prisoners does not require any decision by the organisation!
Feridun Yucel Batu is proof of how tyrannical the F-Type prisons really are, and is proof that there is no alternative to resistance.
When Feridun Yucel Batu was resisting he was no longer a prisoner belonging to our organisation. But it is an unmistakable fact that even someone who does not belong to an organisation feels compelled to resist the F-Type prisons even to the point of death. Feridun Yucel Batu was born in Mus (in the east of the country) in 1969. He actually came from Antalya-Finikeli (in southern Turkey).
In 1990, when he studied at the teachers’ training college of Uludag University, he took part in the November 6 boycott of YOK because its demand seemed right and just to him (YOK is the Higher Education Council set up after the 1980 coup by the state to supervise schools and universities in Turkey. The November 6 boycott is a traditional protest against it). This was his first step towards the revolutionary resistance. He got to know people from Dev-Genc (Revolutionary Youth). Then he took an extensive part in the democratic-academic resistance by youth. In 1991 he was the representative of UL-DER in his faculty. Later he took part in a TODEF meeting (TODEF is a students’ organisation) representing UL-DER. As a result of his just and legitimate struggle he was expelled from the faculty in 1994. He continued to resist in other sphere.
He was arrested in September 1994. He was put in Bursa High-Security Prison, then in Bayrampasa Prison and finally in Umraniye. During the December 19 massacre he was a prisoner in Umraniye. He resisted along with the other prisoners. Then he was put in Kandira F-Type Prison. He was released in 2001 but imprisoned again a short time later and put in Kiriklar F-Type Prison. In December 2001 contact between Feridun Yucel Batu and our organisation was broken off. But nonetheless he started the Death Fast against isolation in Kiriklar F-Type Prison and was martyred.
Despite the unpleasantness which led to contact with him being broken off, Feridun Yucel Batu preferred to resist tyranny with his head held high, to waste away body cell by body cell and to become a martyr of the Death Fast rather than live in solitary confinement.
Put an end to demagogy!
Stop distorting the facts. You cannot convince people anyway and nobody believes you.
The F-Types are centres of barbarism and nobody can live in them.
F-Types are a Nazi fascist policy and all who term themselves human beings should protest against them.
Put an end to these policies, there is no alternative to ending them.
Devrimci Halk Kurtulus Cephesi
(Revolutionary People’s Liberation Front)
2002.12.02
