|
Athens - A European parliament delegation
visiting Turkey to check on its progress in human
rights has found "shocking" reports of murders and
mutilations, a British MEP said yesterday. The
findings, which come a week after Brussels launched
membership talks with Turkey, highlight the scale of
progress the predominantly Muslim country needs to
make in its quest to join the European Union.
Richard Howitt, part of the mission by the
parliament's seven-member human rights subcommittee,
told the Guardian: "What we heard was shocking.
There were accounts of soldiers cutting off people's
ears and tearing out their eyes if they were thought
to be Kurdish separatist sympathisers ... You can't
hear these things without being emotionally
affected."
The MEP, Labour's European foreign affairs spokesman
and a champion of Turkey's EU accession, said the
abuses had been corroborated by human rights
organisations. A trip by the group to Turkey's
Kurdish-dominated south-east had also confirmed
allegations that security forces were reverting to
tactics from "the bad old days", although statistics
showed that instances of torture had fallen by
around 13% since last year.
Indiscriminate shootings, widespread extrajudicial
killings, arbitrary arrests and instances of masked
men raiding homes in the night were reported to have
made a comeback.
"Our sources were very credible and the evidence was
corroborated by all the different groups we spoke
to," said the MEP. "They left me in no doubt of the
veracity of the claims."
But Turkey's foreign ministry spokesman, Namik Tan,
called the claims "silly stories". "They are purely
fictitious. They have nothing to do with the truth.
You won't find anyone who is credible in Turkey
saying such things."
Mr Howitt said that in September alone 95 people had
been arbitrarily arrested in Van, a town near Iran.
Among them was Yusuf Hasar, a 19-year-old suspected
Kurdish rebel sympathiser whose body was found last
week after being arrested by police the previous
day. The violations have coincided with an upsurge
of violence in Turkey's troubled south-east. Armed
clashes have intensified since rebels lifted a
unilateral ceasefire in June last year.
The delegation, whose findings will form the basis
of a report that will feed into Turkey's membership
negotiations, was equally appalled by reports of
violence against women and allegations of body
organs being removed by security forces. Mazumber, a
group representing the relatives of torture victims,
told the MEPs that vital organs were routinely
removed from the bodies of ethnic Kurds, presumably
as part of the illicit trade in people trafficking.
Mr Howitt said it was essential the abuses be
confronted before Ankara got into the nitty-gritty
of the talks.
Since assuming power in 2002, Ankara's modernising
Islamist government has won plaudits for overhauling
the penal code, abolishing the death penalty,
dismantling once-dreaded state security prisons and
increasing cultural rights for ethnic minorities.
But Turkish human rights defenders still speak of a
pervasive "culture of violence" in the country's
police, security and judicial forces.
www.guardian.co.uk
Top |
® 