‘Empty Letter’ From Prison to bianet: I Cannot Write, Hope You Understand

Click to read the article in Turkish/Kurdish

In his letter to bianet, inmate Yusuf Kenan Dinçer from Van Type F Prison has only written “I cannot write about rights violations”. Dinçer’s previous letters were returned for being “inconvenient”.

In the “Decision on evaluation of inconvenient letter”, the Prison Administration Letter Reading Council wrote why the letters were found inconvenient.

The letter dated October 29 reached bianet today (November 27).

“We’ve been trying to contact you for months”

Dinçer’s half paged letter explaining why they couldn’t write about prison conditions is as follows:

“We’ve been trying to contact you via our letters for months but it is not possible because almost none of the letters we write to journalists and MPs are delivered. They are seized and banned without any justification”.

Decision of “inconvenient” was found “inconvenient” as well

“Lastly, the letters we spoke about rights violations in September were found ‘inconvenient’ as well. I am sending you the decision about that. They cited the sections which they saw as ‘inconvenient’ in our letter. We could see neither a threat nor an insult in those lines. There was no lie in those lines and in the rest of the six pages of our letter. But you can also predict that the issue is not that”.

The section found “inconvenient” must be found inconvenient as well since the decision Dinçer mentions was not in the envelope.

“I don’t anything related to the conditions here for this letter to be not blocked and to be delivered to you. Maybe this decision [the unsent one] will tell what we can’t”.

Dinçer’s letter ends with “With hope and resistance”.

State of Emergency in prisons

The increase in rights violations in prisons, especially after the State of Emergency has been declared, were stressed in both rights violations’ reports and inmates’ letters. Some of the rights violations voiced frequently in the past year are as follows:

* Torture, ill-treatment, insult, threat…Stripped search in prisons. Complaints against these practices have been ignored and the impunity has increased.

* The sick prisoners have been forced to handcuffed medical treatment and other violations have occurred in their right to treatment

* Personal care products and personal belongings such as diary, notebook have been seized.

* Life conditions have toughened due to overcrowd. Issues in drinking water.

* Restrictions have been brought on meeting between inmates and their lawyers, families and friend. Access to communication devices such as radio and TV has been banned or limited.  (AS/TK)