turkey - Children tortured in prison: We were beaten with truncheons and pipes

TURKEY | 06-01-2014 | The İzmir branches of the Human Rights Association (IHD) Contemporary Jurists Association (ÇHD) and TAYD-DER have issued a joint press release to highlight the torture suffered by four children transferred to Şakran prison after being tortured in Sincan prison. According to the children, they were beaten with truncheons and pipes when their sick friends failed to stand up for roll call.
IHD Izmir branch executive lawyer Gurbet Uçar read out the press release, saying the children’s New Year had begun with torture in prison, saying: “the powers that be must have decided that such practices are not even newsworthy, given the notoriety of Turkish prisons”, adding: “in order to awaken people to what is happening, on the first day of 2014 children in Sincan prison suffered an attack at the hands of around 50 prison officers. After this incident M.K., M.H.A., H.E. and F.T. were bundled off to the Şakran prison on 3 January.”
Uçar added that the three associations had spoken to the children on 4 and 5 of January.
The penalty for failing to stand up for roll call is torture
According to the children the methods of torture used in Sincan Children’s Prison were  as follows:
- On 1 January prison officers used the pretext of H.E., who was ill, not standing to reply to his name being called out at roll call to attack the children in the room.
- Children in another room became anxious at the noises they heard and  banged on the doors to call prison officers in order to find out what was happening. But prison officers then attacked the children in this room, too, using pepper gas and pressurised water.
- The children said the prison officers hit them with truncheons and iron pipes from the bathrooms. One child was hit on the head by a pot used in the kitchens, while the children said they were hit on the shins with iron pipes to make them fall over.
- Prison officers covered the children’s eyes with their hands, twisted their arms behind their backs and hit them in the mouth/teeth in particular.
- Once nearly all the children were on the floor they were kicked and trodden on by the prison officers.
- One of the children said a cigarette was extinguished on him.
- The children were then handcuffed, with their hands behind their backs, and their feet shackled, and were thrown into cells called sponge rooms.
- The children were left for about two days in these cells alone, being forced to lie on the floor without a mattress. The children were only given mattresses on the Friday evening (3 Jan).
- According to the children the prison officers had threatened and persecuted them for some time. A day before the attack a governor had threatened to “have them dragged along the corridors”. – A “tall, heavily built, white-haired, light brown eyed chief officer” had been the main instigator of the torture, telling the children “they would never forget what had they had endured”.
- The children said there had been around 50 officers involved in the assault, including senior officers.
Torture continued in  Şakran prison
Lawyer Uçar said that after being transferred from Sincan prison to Şakran Prison the tortured children had suffered ‘humiliating treatment’:
- On arrival at the Şakran Children’s Prison on 3 January the children were subjected to a strip search.
- The children have not seen a doctor since the assault, despite complaining of marks of beating and other complaints.
- They were placed on arrival in one person cells containing only a mattress and a Turkish-style toilet, with no basin for hand washing.
Uçar then gave details of the children’s injuries.
Fractures, swellings, wounds, bruises
- The marks of the assaults suffered by the children was still visible to the naked eye.
- One child could not put weight on his right leg due to a violent blow to the shinbone and could only limp. One had a lump on the forehead caused by a prison officer’s shoe. His left hand was swollen and he could not move his ring and little fingers. His right thumb was swollen and he said it was exceedingly painful when he moved it. He said a cigarette had been extinguished just below his right elbow, where there was a scab the size of a chickpea. He said he had severe pain in his right shoulder.
- One child had three swellings on the head. He complained of severe headaches. The same child had bruising and swelling below his right eye. He also had bruised shins and said he felt great pain in the same regions. He had bruising on the back and he said all his teeth were loose. His nose had been broken by a blow.
- One child had three eor four stitches under his chin. He had a graze above his left eyebrow. He could not put weight on his left heel due to severe pain. He had bruising on his back.
- Another child had grazing above his left eye and bruising to the hands, arms and back.
- All the children said they could not sleep at night due to pain.
‘We will pursue this!’
Uçar said they would continue their struggle to ensure that whoever had committed an offence, or turned a blind eye, hoping “the prisons walls would conceal all”, would be exposed and face prosecution, adding that they would continue to monitor the situation of the tortured children in Şakran Prison. (ANF)
AHM-ATİK News Centre