Bulletin de liaison et d'information - Institut kurde de Paris

REVUE DE PRESSE-PRESS REVIEW-BERHEVOKA ÇAPÊ-RlVISTA STAMPA-DENTRO DE LA PRENSA-BASIN ÖZETi
Amnesty: Children targeted for terror
'Incredible as it sounds, children are still suffering every /dnd of human rights abuse'
By State agents
Turki.çh Daily News
ANKARA- Four years after the
United Nations drew up the Convention
of the Rights of the Child,
children are still being targeted
for terrifvin!.! human rights violations,
Amnesty International said
in a r~port released this month.
And though the Convention has
met with à positive response from
oovernments around the world --
~o f~wer than 149 countries are
party ta il and 20 more have
signed -- some of those very same
!wvernments are still violating the
rnost basic human rights of their
children.
"Incredible as it sounds,
dren are still suffering every
chil-
kind
of human rights abuse," said the
international human rights organization.
"Youth offers no protection
from the death squads, the
state rapists and assassins, the torturers
or the executioners.
"Last year. we had to call on
our members around the world
more than 50 times to take urgent
action
young
on behalf of children or
people we knew to be at
nsk -- at risk from the state forces
which should have been there to
protectthem." China is a signatory
to the U.N. Convention on the
Riohts of the Child -- but that
didn't protect 16-year-old Tenzin
Dekyong, a novice nun in Tibet.
She was arrested
while she was
in March 1993,
demonstrating
against Chinese rule, and report':.
edly beaten. She is still in pnson,
and Amnesty
siders her a
International
prisoner of
con-
conscience.
In other cases, children are
forced to go against their parents,
to make them confess or perhaps
to stop opposing the government.
In other cases, children are sinoled
out because they are seen as
~ threat in themselves, sometimes
just bybelonging to the wrong
ethnic groups or living in the
wrong place. And sometimes,
children are slaughtered simply
because
nuisance
they are thought to be a
-- a tragedy seen again
and again amid the children living
in the streets of Brazil and Colombia,
for example.
In Bogota in Colombia last
summer, notices appeared all over
the city centre inviting street children
and other "criminals" to their
own funerals. Dozens appeared
overnight -- and tfieir grim message
was by no means an empty
threat.
"Death squads" are operating in
Colombia, their mission being to
rid the streets of the "socially undesirable"
homeless children --
what is more. there is evidence
that these "death squads" are predominantly
made up of members
of the police force.
Street children often turn to petty
crime in order to survive, so local
businesses view them as a liability.
Businessmen support the
"death squads" in their so-called
cleanup operations -- often a euphemism
for massacres. In 199 I
alone, some 2,800 children were
murdered in Colombia.
And appalling as this is, it is far
from unusual. Amnesty International
is currently in the middle of
a major international campaign
against political killings and "diSappearances"
around the world, in
which children, tragically, are often
the victims. Among the cases
highlighted is that of "Mirsada", a
teenage Muslim girl in Bosnia-
Herzegovina, who was detained
with her sister and others, taken
by Serbian forces and held at a
notorious former hotel, where
they were raped. The othergirls
were released -- "Mirsada" was
never se,en again.
And whilé in some countries,
children are .killed by state secu0-
ty forces acting outside the law, In -
a handful of countries, human
rights violations against children
are part of the legal system. For
example in countnes such as Iraq,
Bangladesh, Pakistan and the
United States, juvenile offenders
can be sentenced to death.
In the United States, for example,
teenagers are still sentenced
to death for crimes they committed
when they werelerhaps as
young as 15 years 01 . Last year
alone, four juvenile offenderswere
executed in the United
States, more than in any other
country known to Amnesty International.
Two states, Georgia and
Massive hunger
strikes continue
in Turkish prisons
600 inmates enter 40th consecutive day of strike
Turkish Daily News • .
ANKARA- - A wave of hunger strikes staged byextrerrnst .10-
mates at several Turkish prisons has entered Its 40th FOnsecutIv.e
daytoday. Meanwhile, relatives of the inmates have en~red their
7th day of their supporting fast. . . ,'"
Human rights Circles told the Turkish Daily News on Tuesday
that the prisoners on hunger strike were mainly from th,e outlawed
Revolutionary Left (De.v-Sol), TurkIsh Re~ol~tlon!uy
Communist Party (TDKP), Turkish Peasants-Workers LiberatIon
Army (TIK~O). and the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party
(PKK) organIzatIOns. .
The hunaer strikes are continuing at the Sagmacllar, Kaysen,
Yozgat, Ça~, Nev~ehir, Erzurum an~ Ankara prisons.
Tbe inmates are said to be demanding that male and ~emale
prisoners, who are in prison on similar charges, gain the nght to
meet with each other at least once a week.
Other demands include the abolition of disciplinary measures
against hunger strikers. and t~e right of inmates on .medical diets
to be permitted to proVIde th.elf own food from outsld~ ..
AbOut 40 relatives of the mmates are currently resIding at Human
Rights Associatidn (IHD) headquarters in Ankara where
they will remain throughout the ~urat.ion of th~ir 0\yn hunger
strike, which they are conductmg III solldanty With the Jnmates.
..
In a written statement they have accused the MIllI~try of Justice
of failing to keep its promises.
The statement mentioned tbat the prisoners' relatives had held
meetings with several senior ministry officials who had.. promised
that Ankara would meet their de~ds. ...•. '
IHD Secretary General Hüsnü Ondül in a separate statement,
called on ministry officials to find "urgent solutIOns" t~ the problems
recalling that inmates had died in past hunger strikes ..
"S~lve tbe problems before there are any new deaths," Öndül
said.
Justice !\1inistry officials refused to ,reply to 1DN questions on
the issue, but there were new claims on Tuesday that or~ers being
issued by the ministry were not being followed by pnson authorities.
The prisoners' demands are said to be for rights that were actually
granted last year but never implemented.
turkish daily news Wednesday, January 12, 1994
57