The EU Commissioner is deeply concerned by the continuing practice of arresting, detaining and prosecuting children who participate in Kurdish demonstrations in southeast Turkey,” European human rights envoy Thomas Hammarberg said in a statement released at the end of his two-day visit to Turkey.
Hammarberg, the envoy of the 47-member Council of Europe, said he had met with 18 minors aged 15-18, including two girls, who were being held in detention in a prison in the city of Diyarbakir for six-to-nine months.
“Hundreds of children have been jailed by Turkish security forces fighting against the Kurdistan Worker Party (PKK) for taking part in anti-government demonstrations”, human rights groups say.
“The imprisonment of children is an exceptional measure which should be avoided in principle. Systematically resorting to the detention and imprisonment of children, occasionally with very heavy sentences of more than 10 years, runs counter to the fundamental principles of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and the guidelines,” the report said.
According to human rights organizations there are hundreds of children in Turkish prisons at the moment charged under the anti-terror laws. And so far the AKP government has done nothing to change the status quo.
Following the initial comment of Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan that ‘’whether men, women or children, the security forces will react with disproportionate force’’, several amendments were made to the country’s anti-terror law, it is possible to charges children as terrorists and put them away for up to 50 years in jail. According to some statistic There are currently 2,622 minors serving time in Turkish prisons on the charge of terrorism.
In 23 of April 2009, an anti-terror police attacked and beat one of our children to death, the policeman was not punished:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IEMuwkETXuU
In 2008, a policeman broke the arm of a Kurdish child in front of the cameras during the Kurdish festival Newroz:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UT9Gk3tkGsk