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HRW report calls on Turkey to end impunity
for state killings, disappearances
4.9.2012
By Human Rights Watch |
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Relatives of victims assemble before a court hearing
in Diyarbakir, Turkey's Kurdish region, March 2012,
during the trial of a former gendarmerie officer and
six others for 20 killings and disappearances
between 1993 and 1995 in Southeast Turkey. Photo:
Emma Sinclair-Webb/Human Rights Watch.
Action Needed to Address Time Limits and Other Bars
to Justice for Past Abuses
September 4, 2012
ISTANBUL,— The Turkish government should
take action to address statutory time limits,
witness intimidation, and other obstacles to the
prosecution of members of security forces and public
officials for killings, disappearances, and torture,
Human Rights Watch said in a report released on
Monday.
Those responsible for the serious human rights
violations committed after the September 1980
military coup and against the Kurdish civilian
population in the 1990s, during the conflict between
the state and the armed outlawed Kurdistan Workers’
Party (PKK), have never been held to account.
Hundreds of deaths in custody and summary executions
by the security forces risk being deemed time-barred
for prosecution because of a 20-year limitation on
murder investigations contained in Turkey’s previous
penal code. Thousands more state-perpetrated
killings of Kurds from the early 1990s could be
similarly excluded from prosecution and trial in the
coming three years.
“Old laws that curtail investigations into serious
human rights abuses in Turkey have allowed the
security forces and public officials to get away
with murder and torture,” said Emma Sinclair-Webb,
senior Turkey researcher at Human Rights Watch. “It
is vital that Turkish authorities act now to ensure
there are no time bars on victims getting justice.”
The 67-page report “Time for Justice: Ending
Impunity for Killings and Disappearances in 1990s
Turkey” looks at the lessons on obstacles to
accountability from the ongoing trial of retired
Colonel Cemal Temizöz and six others for the murder
and disappearance of 20 men and boys between 1993
and 1995. It is the first such trial of a senior
member of the gendarmerie for serious human rights
violations committed in the course of the conflict
between the state and the PKK.
The report builds on interviews with 55 individuals
in Şırnak province, whose relatives were murdered or
disappeared by suspected state perpetrators in the
early 1990s.
Relatives of victims repeatedly told Human Rights
Watch that they wanted to see perpetrators brought
to trial for the murders and disappearances of their
loved ones. Harun Padır was 17 years old in 1994
when security forces detained him with his father
İzzet Padır and uncle Abdullah Özdemir, who were
never seen again. He expressed a sentiment shared by
all the relatives of the victims Human Rights Watch
interviewed for the report: “For us compensation
means nothing. We just want justice.”
Human Rights Watch’s interviews and the Diyarbakır
trial highlight the climate of fear among relatives
of victims that prevailed in the southeast region
until very recently, compounded by a complete
absence of effective investigation of killings and
disappearances in the region at the time and
subsequently.
One witness in the Temizöz case, İsmet Uykur, saw
the murder of his father Ramazan Uykur in Cizre town
in broad daylight in February 1994. He told the
Diyarbakir court:
Fear triumphed in Cizre. In those days we were
unable to go and lodge complaints because there were
many unresolved killings… there were people who had
seen the incidents in the region but at that time
they wouldn’t be witnesses because of their fear; in
those days we were afraid of the gendarmerie and the
village guards.
Human Rights Watch spoke to dozens of relatives of
victims who confirmed either that they had, for many
years, been too afraid to pursue complaints or that,
if they did, there was a complete absence of any
effective investigation. Their words reinforce the
European Court of Human Rights’ many judgments
against Turkey recording violations of the right to
life through a pattern of failure to carry out
effective investigations.
Witnesses reported that security forces abducted and
later killed Ömer Candoruk, Yahya Akman, and two
cousins, Süleyman Gasyak and Abdulaziz Gasyak, after
they passed by car through a gendarmerie checkpoint
on the road to Silopi in March 1994. Sabri Gasyak,
Abdulaziz’s brother, told Human Rights Watch:
We couldn’t have pursued complaints back then or
sought justice. I’d have been arrested if I’d
pursued the case. In the late 80s our village in
Siirt’s Pervari district was burnt down by the state
and emptied. We were taken in and tortured; hundreds
of our animals were killed. In 1994 after Süleyman
and Abdulaziz were killed, many of our family went
to Zahko in northern Iraq.
The Temizöz case has provided important lessons
about the possible obstacles to justice likely to
arise in thousands more cases of abuse by members of
the security forces and state officials in provinces
throughout the southeast of Turkey and also in major
cities.
Drawing on these lessons, Time for Justice calls on
the Turkish government, courts, and prosecutors to
develop a model of victim-centered justice in
Turkey. Prosecutors and courts need to offer
vulnerable witnesses, relatives of victims,www.ekurd.net
and their lawyers more effective protection from
intimidation and attacks in and out of court when
they are testifying in trials against defendants who
are members of the security forces, village guards,
or state officials. Action is also needed to shorten
proceedings, which stretch out over months and years
making intimidation more likely.
“The climate of fear among victims’ relatives and
witnesses persists to this day,” said Sinclair-Webb.
“To give them the confidence to come forward,
prosecutors and courts need to adopt more effective
witness protection and a victim-centered approach to
justice.”
The report contains concrete recommendations to
strengthen justice for crimes by state actors,
including:
Increasing the speed and efficiency of trials,
including by holding hearings on consecutive days;
Designating prosecutors to focus on the
investigation of past abuses;
Directing prosecutors to fully investigate chain of
command responsibility for human rights abuses;
Strenuous efforts should be made by prosecutors and
courts to identify members of the security forces to
whom witnesses refer only by their code names so
that prosecutors can call them to testify as
possible suspects;
Witness protection measures should be improved and
courts should ensure they take action to sanction
intimidation of witnesses and victims’ relatives.
The report recommends that the Turkish parliament
establish an independent truth commission to examine
past abuses. It also builds on earlier
recommendations by the UN, the Council of Europe,
and other international bodies calling on the
government to pursue a comprehensive plan to
dismantle the village guard system operating in
provinces of southeast Turkey. The report finds the
village guard system, deeply embedded in the social
and political fabric of local communities, to be a
major obstacle to justice in the region.
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