Draft Law Legalizes Torture
The draft Law on Execution of Penalties is a legal device aimed at turning pressure and torture into systematic acts, believe Istanbul branch of the Human Rights Association (IHD) activists.
Eren Keskin, head of IHD Istanbul branch, and Huri Vayic from the organizations Prison Commission, warn that Turkish parliament will soon pass the draft Law on Execution of Penalties which IHD argues for providing legal justification for systematic psychological torture.
In a public statement, IHD criticizes the draft Law on Execution of Penalties on those points:
* By regarding the convicts and prisoners as individuals who are stripped of rights, and who are in need of rehabilitation; and by regarding prison management as the representative of absolute truth and goodness, and by accepting it as the curative authority, the draft law aims at building the state-individual relation of the fascist ideology in the prison,
* By introducing prison uniforms, the draft law aims at stamping the oppressed individuals also through their outfits and at extending oppression over every second of the day,
* Through compulsory education, the draft law forces imprisoned individuals to adopt a specific ideological stand,
* Through forced labor, the law aims at maximizing the abuse of labor, and at oppressing the individual once again by stripping from the right of determining how to use his/her time and productivity,
* By forbidding even silent protests, the law denies the prisoners' right to pursue personal rights and regards them as slaves,
* The maximum security F-type prisons with 1 to 3 people-cells legalizes isolation, and turns torture through isolation into a strong item of the legal system.
* The law also lifts the distinction between detainees and convicts. Apart from imposing forced labor, the draft law similarly threatens the detainees even in harsher terms such as accepting visitors with the approval of the prosecutor and the judge, incarceration in isolation cells, and handcuffing in prison.
IHD reminded that Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, recently during the opening of a courthouse in Alanya had said: "Torture does not only take place under detention. The unhealthy prison conditions should also be regarded as torture."
"Today, the conditions of the prisons in our country, and especially isolation, are a type of torture for the prisoners." (YS/EU/EK/YE)