March 1995, pgs. 68-69

Human Rights

By R. Clemente Holden

U.S. Officials Criticize Turkish Prison Sentences

The Dec. 8 sentencing of eight Kurdish members of the Turkish parliament to prison sentences ranging from three to eight years on charges of backing the separatist Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) has prompted renewed criticism from Clinton administration officials of alleged Turkish human rights abuses. Evidence cited by Turkish prosecutors at the trials of two of the legislators included statements they made in talks at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, DC and before the Helsinki Commission of the U.S. Congress.

The eight Kurdish parliamentarians refused to defend themselves in court, saying government restrictions made a proper defense impossible. Spokesmen for the defendants said they would appeal the verdicts.

U.S. officials said Turkey increasingly has curtailed freedom of speech, harassed and jailed journalists, mistreated prisoners and permitted brutal military repression against civilians in its campaign against the armed insurrection of the Marxist PKK. Turkish Prime Minister Tansu Ciller'sgovernment spent $6.5 billion in military operations against the separatists in 1994.

"We have no problem with their fight against PKK terrorism," a U.S. State Department official told The Washington Post. "But they have adopted tactics that probably are pushing people into the arms of the PKK." U.S. officials also cited the recent indictment of the president of Turkey's human rights foundation, Yavuz Onen, after he criticized prison conditions, and the sentencing to six months in jail of journalist Mehmet Ali Birant for making a television film in which Turkish soldiers denigrate the military.

"We are concerned about a number of examples where freedom of speech has been curtailed" on the pretext of combatting the Kurdish rebels, said Assistant Secretary for Human Rights John Shattuck, who visited Turkey in 1994. Also in 1994, the U.S. Congress withheld 10 percent of $364.5 in U.S. military aid scheduled for Turkey in 1995 pending completion in March 1995 of a State Department report on human rights conditions there.

More than 13,000 people have been killed in Turkey since the fighting began 10 years ago, and the English-language Turkish Daily News has reported that 5,000 people are in jail or awaiting trial for violating Turkey's tough anti-terrorism law which prohibits acts or ideas that "threaten the indivisible unity of the State."

For their part, PKK terrorists have targeted government workers for assassination and killed dozens of school teachers in eastern Turkey. Hizir Eksi, an official in Turkey's Ministry of Human Rights, told the Christian Science Monitor: "A radical improvement in the human rights situation under these circumstances is impossible." In Washington, the Turkish embassy distributed a statement saying that "Turkish courts remain committed to the rule of law" and that "democracies have the right to defend themselves."

French Human Rights Commission Honors Palestinian Al-Haq Group

Al-Haq, a Palestinian group, was one of five human rights organizations honored by France's National Human Rights Commission on Dec. 9 with awards of 100,000 francs (US$18,100). The Palestinian group received its award for a human rights and legal aid program in Jericho and Gaza. The five winning groups, selected from 77 candidates from 41 countries, also included the French-based International League Against Racism and Anti-Semitism, honored for organizing anti-racist seminars in low-income French suburbs, and groups from Guatemala, Ivory Coast and Madagascar.

Al-Haq, the West Bank affiliate of the Geneva-based International Commission of Jurists (ICJ), was founded in 1979 by Palestinian lawyers. A recent Al-Haq publication entitled Palestinian Victims of Torture Speak Out documents the kinds of torture inflicted upon Palestinians in Israeli prisons and detention centers since the Israeli government's Landau Commission issued its report on methods of interrogation by Israel's General Security Service (Shin Bet) on Oct. 30, 1987. The Israeli cabinet voted in November 1987 to endorse the report and implement its recommendations, which permit use of "mild physical coercion" in interrogation of detainees in Israeli-occupied territories.

That Israel interrogation sessions involve more than "mild physical coercion" is demonstrated in the 49-page Al-Haq booklet. It is based upon 234 affidavits by victims of Israeli torture documented by Al-Haq field workers and includes verbatim translations of 13 of the affidavits. The Arabic edition, published in 1992, and the English-language translation, published in 1993, can be obtained by writing Al-Haq, Ramallah, West Bank, P.O. Box 1413, via Israel or telephoning the organization in Ramallah at 02-956421.

Israeli Human Rights Group Calls For Halt to Police Torture

A new report by the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem documents reports of increasingly brutal interrogation techniques practiced by Israeli security services in 1994. Israeli authorities long have used the "ticking bomb" defense that violent interrogations are justified to extract information that could prevent an imminent killing.

Citing in their report accounts of nine Palestinians jailed during 1994 and court testimony by Shin Bet interrogators, B'Tselem officials called for the abolition rather than an increase of police torture.

"The norm should be a total prohibition of torture, but the government is gradually widening the crack through which the legal system is used to sanction torture," said B'Tselem director Yizhar Beer. "Most cases are a far cry from the ticking bomb situation."

"The response to terrorism may also mean adopting its ways," said B'Tselem researcher Yuval Ginbar at a Jerusalem news conference. "We call on the government not to succumb to terrorism by using terrorist methods."

The new B'Tselem report says that even since the accord between Palestinians and Israelis, Shin Bet and Israeli army interrogators beat and violently shake Palestinian prisoners; deprive them of sleep, food and water; tie them in painful positions, hood them, and confine them to closet-like cells.

Israelis Seal Houses of Wachsman Kidnappers

Israeli security forces on Nov. 29 sealed the homes of the families of three Palestinians accused of the Oct. 9 kidnapping and the killing of Israeli Corporal Nahshon Wachsman. Police bricked up the East Jerusalem houses of Hassan Natche and Abdul Karim Badr, who were killed along with Wachsman when Israelis raided the house in which he was being held.

Also sealed was the East Jerusalem house of Jihad Yaghmour, who is in Israeli custody. Yaghmour told reporters, "We had no intention of murdering Wachsman. If the Israelis had waited a day or two, Wachsman could have gone home without any harm."

The demolition of Palestinian houses slowed after Yitzhak Rabin became prime minister in July 1992, and stopped between signing of the Palestinian-Israeli agreement of September 1993 and November 1994. Nevertheless, when Palestinians whose houses had been sealed sought to reoccupy them, Israeli authorities prevented it.

Al-Haq, the Palestinian human rights group, reports that since 1980 the Israeli army in the occupied territories has demolished 564 houses of persons suspected of anti-occupation activities and fully or partially sealed 475 others. These totals do not include hundreds of houses destroyed because they were built without Israeli permits.

In many cases, the suspects have been released after serving months or years in Israeli detention, but permission has not been granted either to rebuild or reopen their houses. Some families with nowhere else to go have been living for years in tents on the sites of sealed or demolished houses.

In protesting the violations of international law represented by the most recent sealings, human rights activists pointed out that the apartment of Dr. Baruch Goldstein in the Israeli West Bank settlement of Kiryat Arba remains untouched. Goldstein machine gunned to death 29 Palestinian men and boys at prayer in the Ibrahimi mosque in Hebron in February 1994.

Tunis Blocks Activist From Accepting Human Rights Award

Dr. Moncef Al-Marzouqi, former president of the Tunisian League for Human Rights, was prevented by the Tunisian government from traveling to New York to accept an award from the U.S.-based Human Rights Watch, according to that organization. Dr. Al-Marzouqi, a physician at the Faculty of Medicine in Sousse, served from 1989 to 1994 as president of the Tunisian League for Human Rights, the oldest independent human rights organization in the Arab world.

In January 1992 he was held for questioning concerning remarks he made to foreign media regarding political pressures on the judiciary and mistreatment of detainees. In February 1993 he was questioned about the National Committee to Support Prisoners of Conscience, which he co-founded and which the Tunisian government declared illegal.

In February 1994 he announced his candidacy for president of Tunisia to test the government's commitment to pluralism. Dr. Al-Marzouqi was arrested and held in pre-trial detention from March to July after a Spanish newspaper quoted him as questioning the independence of the Tunisian judiciary. Al-Marzouqi said he had been misquoted and the newspaper acknowledged it had made an error. Al-Marzouqi was released from jail but the Tunisian prosecutor has not dropped charges against him of "defaming the judiciary" and "disseminating false news."

R. Clemente Holder writes on human rights and environmental affairs.