MERSIN, — forty eight days have passed since the beginning of the indefinite hunger strike against rights violations and torture in the Osmaniye T Type Closed Prison. The hunger strikers’ health deteriorates every passing day.
It has been reported that 13 out of the 30 Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) members on hunger strike have reached a life-threatening point. The prisoners’ families who see the hunger strikers becoming weaker and weaker on every visit said they fear somebody might die.
“My husband is no more able to walk or to open his eyes. He is almost in a vegetative state. Who will be held to account for his death if he dies? The government says that they have put on trial the 12 September 1980 military coup but they are actually using the same methods as the generals in Osmaniye prison,” says Umit Ilgen to DIHA News Agency.
The families are angry at the injustice and the government’s indifference. Haci Inan has been charged to nine years because he planted a tree in the memory of murdered Azadiya Welat daily reporter Metin Alataş.
His mother Sedila Inan says, “They charged him to nine years for planting a tree and now they are torturing him”. Another relative of a prisoner, Selahhattin Bozkurt said: “The government wants our children to die.,”
The Human Rights Association (IHD) Mersin Branch chair who makes an analogy between the Osmaniye Prison and Guantanamo notes that their submissions and appeals have not been taken into consideration by the authorities.