Roboski Massacre Brought Before ECtHR With 281 Claimants

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281 victims of the Roboski massacre lodged an application to the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) against violation of their rights including notably the right to life.

The domestic remedies were exhausted after the Constitutional Court had dismissed the last application lodged concerning the massacre in which 34 persons had been killed in the bombardment by war planes.

Talking to bianet, Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) Şırnak MP Ferhat Encü who lost 11 relatives in the massacre has stated that the content of the application covered the violation of the right to life, not identifying the ones responsible for the act and bringing these before justice.

“Our priority is to bring the perpetrators before justice”

“All the injustice and unlawfulness including the violation of fundamental rights of the Roboski families are covered by the letter of application. The submitted petition has 281 applicants”. Encü has pointed out that the perpetrators of the massacre were not brought before justice yet and added they demanded a court verdict to put them on trial and noted “our priority is to identify the perpetrators”.    

Encü: Government mainly responsible

Following the Minister of Energy and Natural Resources, Berat Albayrak noting that “he predicted that the Uludere issue would be brought to agenda again, it became a topic of discussion that the Gülen Community claimed to be related to the coup attempt on July 15, had also a role in the Roboski massacre.

Ferhat Öncü has responded our question regarding the above mentioned claims as;

“Years have passed since the massacre. Primarily, our goal was to bring the perpetrators before justice and to punish them within the national judicial system but this was not possible. The Government of AKP [Justice and Development Party] is among those mainly responsible for the massacre.

“Now they want to put the blame for the massacre on other forces, there might be other forces in play but when we look at the whole picture, the government is mainly responsible”.

What happened: Current Status in judiciary

On December 28, 2011, 34 people were bombed by fighter jets in Uludere district of Şırnak province in southeastern Turkey.

On June 11, 2013, Public Prosecution of Diyarbakır decided of non-jurisdiction about the case due to “reckless homicide” and sent the case to Military Prosecution of General Staff.

Military Prosecution declared to proceed no further on January 7, 2014. Lawyers of the victims’ families objected to the decision, but they were rejected.

Thereupon the case was brought before the Constitutional Court. In preliminary examination, the court has found some deficiencies in the application and ordered to eliminate these. Subsequently the Constitutional Court has rejected the application on its decision on February 24, 2015 as the deficiencies were not eliminated within limitation of time. (AS/DG)