JINHA

ŞIRNEX –10-year-old Selman Ağar had left the house to get two bottles of water when police shot him in the Kurdish town of Cizre, Turkey, said his mother Rahime.

For more than a week, Turkish security forces maintained a total blockade in the town of Cizre. Residents were left trapped in their homes without food or water as snipers opened fire on anyone who went outside. On the evening of September 10, police snipers shot a 10-year-old boy named Selman Ağar in the street in the town. Selman’s mother spoke about the evening, saying that Selman had left to bring home water to the deprived family.

After Selman was shot by state snipers, residents managed to evacuate the wounded boy to an area out of snipers’ sights. Parliamentary representatives from the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) negotiated to allow an ambulance flying a white flag to take Selman to the hospital. Finally, they got permission, but Selman had already lost a good deal of blood. He died the next day in the hospital.

The fourth-grader wanted to leave the house to find water, explained his mother, Rahime Ağar. It was the sixth day of the police blockade of Cizre and his family was out of water.

“It was around five, towards evening. He said, ‘mom, I’ll go get water’ over and over, but I didn’t let him go out,” said Rahime. “The sixth time, he said ‘I’m going to get water, mom’ and left the house. He went to buy two plastic water bottles. He was just outside the door when he was shot.”

Rahime reacted angrily to the state-appointed district governor’s claim that the PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party) killed the dozens of civilians who died in Cizre.
“There’s no PKK here; the state killed my child,” said Rahime. Rahime declared her intention to have those responsible for Selman’s shooting tried in court.

(pz-pk/gc/fk/cm)