JINHA

AMED/ŞIRNEX – The Initiative to Close Children's Prisons protested the recentintimidation and sexual harassment of child prisoners outside of the Diyarbakir E-type prison today.

Simultaneously, Şirnex (Turkish name Şırnak) members of Human Rights Association (İHD) launched a signature campaign to close children's prisons.

Child prisoners were recently sexually harassed in AliağaŞakran Children's Prison in Izmir. Children in the Van M-type prison also recently reported that people dressed in Islamic dress attempted to recruit them to join ISIS. The two instances have drawn attention to the widespread rights abuses in Turkey's child prisons.

Lawyer Gamze Yalçın, speaking on behalf of the coordinating members of the Initiative, said that the justice system for children in Turkey does not meet universal standards and is rife with abuses of children's basic human rights. She noted that the torture of children was extremely widespread in the wave of arrests that followed the uprising for Kobanê across Turkey's Kurdish cities on October 6-7.

Human rights associations had attempted throughout 2014 to gain access to the Izmir prison in order to analyze the extent of the rights violations there, Gamze said, but the Ministry of Justice had denied them.

The five basic demands of the initiative are as follows: a children-specific alternative to the current model that imprisons children in closed institutions; for institutions of punishment and execution to be open to analysis by human rights organizations and NGOs; for those who violate children's rights under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child to be punished; for effective investigations into rights abuses against imprisoned children and an end to impunity for perpetrators; and for all children's prisons, which generate violence and damage children's psycho-social development, to be losed.

The Şirnex meeting to announce the signature campaign was led by İHD and attended by representatives from a number of parties and institutions, including Şirnex co-mayor EylemOnuk; members of the Democratic Regions Party (DBP) and Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP); MEYA-DER, which advocates for the relatives of those lost in the war in the Kurdish region; TUHAD-FED, an organization for solidarity with the families of prisoners; Zahide Women's Solidarity Center; and KURDÎ-DER, which supports the literary and cultural development of Kurdish.

(ny-pz/fk/cm)