JINHA

ANKARA – Women prisoners in Turkey’s Sincan Closed Women’s Prison are in their second month of resisting harassment through strip searches.

In the Sincan Closed Women’s Prison in Turkey’s capital of Ankara, guards harass women prisoners through the routine enforcement of strip searches. For two months now, the women prisoners have been resisting and protesting the strip searches. When prisoners leave for hospital visits or court dates, they are subjected to searches both by guards and by soldiers. The soldiers have insisted on conducting the strip searches in a closed room without security cameras.

Political prisoners convicted of membership in the left organizatons PAJK, TKP/ML, TİKKO and MLKP have been holding a naked protest against the practice. The women march through the prison in just their underwear when they are transferred between rooms. “At the same time, whenever there is an attack [against a prisoner] by means of a strip search, we all chant slogans and bang on our doors,” said the women.

(fk/cm)