Kids Face Police Questioning at Schools

Turkey's Education and Scientific Workers Union (Egitim-Sen) Adana branch chairman Guven Boga says the police force and the gendarme have been involved in at least two recent incidents where primary school children were tailed or questioned in an attempt to reach their parents who have outstanding credit card debts.

In an interview with bianet, the unionists said a child at primary school age had in one incident being tailed outside by security forces who questioned him in a school bus while another had been called out of class and ordered to attend questioning in an administrative office at the school.

The police and the gendarme, technically both attached to the Ministry of Interior and policing urban and rural areas respectively, are blamed for doing the questioning in the two incidents which, according Boga, are "concrete incidents" that have been recorded in the province in the past ten days.

The schools subject to child questioning were identified as the Ata Primary School in Adana's Yuregir district and the Petrol Ofisi Primary School at Seyhan district.

"The gendarme who went to the Ata Primary School told the principal and assistant they needed to speak to the child of a parent who had an outstanding credit card debt" Boga explained.

In this incident, "the deputy principal calls the child out of his classroom and the gendarme question him in the deputy principal's room".

The second incident that Egitim-Sen says is set in stone, involves the arrival of plainclothes policemen at the Petrol Ofisi Primary School where they claim they need to speak to one of children due a parent's call-up for military recruitment and outstanding credit card debt.

Boga explains that in this incident the teacher involved did not allow for the interview to take place which prompted the visiting officers to then go up to the principal.

"The principal then said they could not speak to the child in the school itself and after this he identified the child for them when outside" Boga said.

"The plainclothes policemen then get into the same service vehicle that the child has boarded and interrogate him there in front of his friends" he adds.

Investigation called for

Boga told bianet it was unacceptable for children to be approached by the security forces of the state in this way and then forced to give information on their parents.

Blaming school administrators for allowing security forces into education establishments and bearing the initial responsibility of the trauma faced by the children involved, Boga said administrators of both schools had violated the ministry's own regulations on these issues as well as the rights of the children themselves.

He said that both an administrative and legal investigation needed to look into these cases and added that he himself had discussed the issue with the Adana Provincial Education Director who had promised to look into it.

"We must immediately rid ourselves of this shame of turning schools into barracks and police stations in the eyes of children" he said, condemning such acts which, he argued, created a lack of confidence in the children and distanced them from the school environment. (KO/II/YE/EU)