Roj Bash Kurdistan

20,434 arrests
421 journalists arrested
1,749 years of political sentences
346 registered cases of torture
190 deaths in custody
194 disappeared
78 murders by unknown assailants
2,261 death sentences (1994-96)

134 associations, trade unions and publishers raided
132 publications banned and 195 confiscated.

4,000 villages burnt and evacuated
3 million villagers displaced

Prisoners battered for speaking Kurdish

Prisoners in Iskenderun Type M Closed Prison sent messages through their families and spoke about the torture they have been subjected to.

Prisoners said, “The pressure is at a peak. Do something at once.” Prisoners stated that they were battered for speaking Kurdish, and that they are subjected to insults by the guards almost constantly throughout the day.

A mother who spoke on the phone with her son in the prison said: “They couldn’t say much because they were on the phone. But as soon as we started to speak he said ‘Go and file charges’. This last week, their wards were raided almost every day and they were battered.

They took three prisoners and tortured them in the solitary confinement cells they put them in. They said the pressure increases every day, and that lawyers and human rights organizations should do something.”