JINHA

SÊRT – After two missing girls were discovered in the home of two police officers in Siirt, the state is maintaining silence on the nature of the issue—which local NGOs suspect to be a case of abduction and sexual assault. The Siirt Women's Platform called for a full explanation of the incident.

The Women's Platform members gathered at the Siirt Human Rights Association branch office to call for a full explanation of the incident. 15 minutes before they were scheduled to start their speaking, the local police department released an announcement. Sociologist Esra Celile Ası Güneş, of the Berfin Women's Information Center, said this was no coincidence.

"But the announcement is not satisfying," she said. "It's easy to see the attitude of those responsible towards children just from the fact that they used the phrase 'the girls went to and passed time in the house'" to describe the incident of abduction and sexual abuse.

The police department initially filed no charges against the officers. Now, the state has declined to file charges for sexual abuse or abduction in the case but instead filed the vague charge of "deprivation of liberty" against the two officers, minimizing the issue of the violation against children unable to give consent.

Celile condemned the phenomenon of women being blamed for sexual abuse and femicide and said that while femicides like that of local 30-year-old woman Sonçiçek Kocaağa were still unsolved and uninvestigated by the state, once again women were facing total silence. She noted that the total lack of justice for Sonçiçek boded poorly for the case of the two girls.

The ruling AKP party stands widely accused by women of encouraging femicide and violence against women by protecting the perpetrators of these crimes, issuing sentence reductions and discriminatory legal privileges for male perpetrators.

(şö/gc/cm)