DEVRİMCİ HALK KURTULUŞ CEPHESİ

Statement: 295 Date: February 28, 2003

The F-Type prisons are now more “calm”…
There is one voice less raising an objection…
ISOLATION IS CONTINUING TO KILL!

There is news of another death in the F-Type prison cells.
Last week the Justice Minister said,“Our prisons are extremely quiet and calm”.
Now they must be even more tranquil (!) A prisoner they tried to drive insane with solitary confinement was unable to bear these conditions any longer and set fire to himself!

Orhan Ogur, who was in a ONE-PERSON cell in Tekirdag F-Type Prison, took an individual decision to set himself on fire on February 16 after being subjected to prison cells, isolation, disciplinary punishment and physical attack, one after the other and because of the torture of isolation and attacks to which he was exposed every moment of every day; Orhan Ogur was taken to Haydarpasa Numune Hospital and was martyred on February 27.

The “new” Justice Minister Cemil Cicek, who has been in office for over three months, has concealed the reality of the ONE-PERSON ISOLATION CELLS in all speeches and statements on the subject of the F-Type prisons. Not once has he used the words “cell” and “one person”.
State if you please:
– Where was Orhan Ogur when he set himself on fire?
– State also, why did Orhan Ogur set himself on fire in your prisons that are so calm?
– Explain; if there is no isolation, how do human beings end up in such a condition?

The AKP is practising fascism; never mind his predecessors, an honourable, decent, responsible Justice Minister who valued human beings would immediately resign if somebody set fire to themselves because of repression in a place that fell within such a minister’s sphere of responsibility. But that is not going to happen in Turkey, which is ruled by fascism.
What is another human life to them?

With Orhan Ogur, that is the 105th human being they have murdered since December 19, 2000.
That is 105 people who join the hundreds of thousands murdered by America’s servants.
A murderous government is continuing its killings!
Isolation is continuing to kill!

Isolation, torture, disciplinary punishments…

Orhan Ogur was a young man of 22.
Orhan Ogur was born on March 3, 1981 in Istanbul. On the one hand he went to school, on the other, he worked in restaurants, textile factories, moved cargoes, and also worked in pastry shops and in markets. He became better acquainted with the places where the system’s exploitation is at its worst. He started to take up his place in the struggle when he was 16. At the end of 1998 his relationship with our movement took on an organised form. He sought to develop the struggle and the organising of our people in the shantytown districts such as Nurtepe, Guzeltepe and Armutlu.
He was a revolutionary. For this reason, on November 6, 2001 he was jailed and put in the F-Type prisons.
In Tekirdag F-Type Prison cells he experienced attacks every day on his honour and his personality. He resisted alongside his comrades.

In July 2002, on the pretext of carrying out a search, the authorities entered the cell Orhan Ogur shared with two other prisoners and all three prisoners were tortured. As a result of this attack, Orhan Ogur’s body was bruised in many places, his fingernails were broken and he was soaked in his own blood.

But even this was not enough for the torturers. Despite the fact that Orhan and the other two prisoners made a formal complaint about the torture to which they had been subjected, they themselves were deemed to be the “guilty” ones and the prison administration “punished” them with six months’ discipline and a ban on correspondence for 45 days!
Because the plumbing was broken they could not meet their needs for days and were neither able to clean themselves nor wash their eating utensils, so they did not eat at all. They could not use the toilet because of the stench and filth.
That is the image presented by the prisons Cemil Cicek considers to be so “peaceful and calm”.
The prisons of a Susurluk (*) minister put people like Orhan Ogur in solitary confinement, while people like Sedat Peker enjoy luxury treatment!

Later Orhan Ogur was put in an isolation cell.
Finally, a short time ago, the pretext of a search was again used to attack him in his cell.
What is particularly striking about this is why the “search” came about.
Orhan Ogur was put in an isolation cell near the cells occupied by the fascist mafioso Sedat Peker and other mafiosi. A search of the mafia members’ cells turned up a computer and a telephone. (Since Cemil Cicek has openly defended those involved in Susurluk, it is unthinkable that any of them would be without a telephone while he is Justice Minister… Even if mafiosi lose a phone as a result of a search it won’t be long before they get a new one.) But because a computer and a phone had been found on the mafia prisoners, the soldiers again searched and attacked Orhan and prisoners like him.
After this attack Orhan said, “I can’t take this any longer, something has to be done”, and he set himself on fire. At the moment where he lost the power to resist tyranny any longer, he turned his death into a protest against tyranny, even if it was not the result of a decision taken by us.

Isolation kills… We will resist death! After the suicides of an ordinary prisoner in Sincan F-Type Prison and Volkan Agirman in Kandira, now there is Orhan Ogur…
Isolation is a reality that cannot be concealed. Because death cannot be concealed.
These deaths are a slap in the face for Cemil Cicek and his secretary Ertosun, whose lies are no longer believed. Every death spits into their faces. But they have no sense of shame. They have made the Nazi mentality their own. Murderers have no sense of shame.

Our comrades in prison are continuing the Death Fast resistance in the F-Type prison cells.
Our comrades in the Zehra Kulaksiz Death Fast Team (the 9th Team) have set out on the road to death and are going forward, determined not to give in to the isolation tyranny of the AKP government.
This resistance will continue until isolation is lifted.

Orhan Ogur reminds all patriots and democrats of the need to unite the struggle against the pro-American tendencies of the AKP government with the struggle against the AKP’s tyranny.

To our people and our patriots: people near you are being killed through isolation. Those who do not see this are not able to oppose collaboration and fascism elsewhere!

Devrimci Halk Kurtulus Cephesi

(Revolutionary People’s Liberation Front)

(*) Susurluk, a town in western Turkey, is the name of a scandal that erupted there in November 1996 when a car crash revealed some of the links between the police, organised crime, fascism and parliament. Cemil Cicek and others have defended those caught up in Susurluk on the grounds that they were supposedly acting to defend the state.