Europe envoy assails Turkey for Kurd youth jailing
Published: May 26, 2010 23:34 Updated: May 26, 2010 23:34
ANKARA: Turkey's detention and jailing of Kurdish children on charges of supporting terrorism in anti-government protests contravenes UN human rights principles, a European human rights envoy said on Wednesday.
Hundreds of children have been jailed by Turkish security forces fighting Kurdish separatist rebels for taking part in anti-government demonstrations, human rights groups say. Most are treated as adults under harsh anti-terrorism laws.
"The Commissioner remains deeply concerned by the continuing practice of arresting, detaining and prosecuting children who participate in Kurdish demonstrations in southeast Turkey," European human rights envoy Thomas Hammarberg said in a statement summing up his views after a two-day visit to Turkey, a candidate to join the European Union.
Hammarberg, the envoy of the 47-member Council of Europe, said he had met with 18 minors aged 15-18, including two girls, who were being held in detention in a prison in the city of Diyarbakir for six-to-nine months.
They allegedly had caused disturbances during a demonstration considered to be supporting the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) rebel group.
"The imprisonment of children is an exceptional measure which should be avoided in principle," the statement said.
"Systematically resorting to the detention and imprisonment of children, occasionally with very heavy sentences of more than 10 years, runs counter to the fundamental principles of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and the guidelines."
There was no immediate reaction by Turkey, but in the past the government has accused the PKK and its supporters of using children as "pawns of terrorism" in demonstrations in impoverished Kurdish cities.
Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan's government has passed laws to expand cultural and political rights of Kurds, who complain of discrimination at the hands of the Turkish state.
But human rights groups complain that draconian anti-terrorist laws remain in place. Many children have received harsh sentences, with little legal defense, for burning tires and throwing stones at security forces.
Ankara, Brussels and the United States regard the PKK as a terrorist group responsible for the deaths of more than 40,000 people since it launched its armed campaign for an ethnic homeland in southeast Turkey in 1984.
Many Kurds view the PKK sympathetically.
(Reporting by Ibon Villelabeitia; Editing by Michael Roddy)
