Human Rights Association (IHD) Amed Branch has disclosed the ‘Report of 2014 on Violations of Children’s Rights in Eastern and Southeastern Anatolia Regions’ at a press conference in the main Kurdish city.
According to the IHD report, 2082 violations of children’s rights were registered during 2014, while 4 children lost their lives and 7 others were wounded as a result of violence by security forces in the Kurdish region. 444 children were detained and among them 106 were remanded in custody. 518 were sued and imposed sentence while 872 were blacklisted.
Speaking at the press conference, IHD Deputy President and Amed Branch Chair Raci Bilici firstly condemned in strongest terms the brutal murder of Özgecan Aslan in Tarsus district of Mersin, vowing to continue to fight violence against women.
‘Government wants to raise a generation of the kind it desires’
Bilici remarked that the government was in a systematic and planned approach towards the children for it endeavored to raise a generation of the kind it desired. He noted that the government also manifested a harsh and repressive attitude against the circles that resisted to its approach which tried to drag the children into its own system by various means such as education.
‘Right violations increasingly continue’
Reading the press statement before the announcement of the report, IHD Amed Branch Commission for Children Member Lawyer Mahsum Kaya stated that right violations against children increasingly continued in 2014 as well.
Citing the figures compiled by the IHD, Kaya said that 585 children have lost their lives in the last 27 years as a result of intervention by security forces and explosion of mines and explosives as remains of the war. Kaya stated that 8,500,000 children are currently continuing their lives as ‘workers’ under unsecured conditions. Kaya listed the ongoing categorical problems of children as denial of mother tongue education and courses on religious beliefs, victims of the TMK (anti-terror law), child brides, children living out on streets, victims of migration and victims of violence, describing the tragic picture as a shame of Turkey on behalf of democracy and supremacy of human rights.
‘Stop aiming your guns at our children’
Kaya remarked that large number of children’s right to freedom and security were violated during 2014 when they faced unnameable violence at primarily mass demonstrations, under detention and various places outside detention.
Recalling that security forces deliberately targeted children with real bullets, tear gas canisters and armored vehicles, claiming lives and causing permanent physical damage for many, Kaya stated that 444 children were detained and among them 106 were remanded in custody during the year, noting that they also suffered torture and ill treatment under detention and in detention centers.
Kaya called on the state and government officials to “stop aiming your guns at our children’.
‘Violence by security forces is a constitutional crime’
According to Kaya, the new ‘internal security package’ intends to create a legal ground for the violence perpetrated by security forces. He said it was not difficult to foresee the terrifying level of right violations to be witnessed if the draft was put into practice, especially its consequences for the children.
‘Blacklisting is a scandalous incident’
Kaya described the blacklisting of 872 children in Amed as a violation of both the children’s and their families’ right of privacy, remarking that the dismissal of a few people from the Ministry of National Education was just an attempt to cover up the incident and to hide the actual intention behind it.
The report by IHD listed the violations of children’s rights in the Kurdish year in 2014 as follows;
- 4 killed, 7 wounded by police and gendarme
- 1 killed, 2 wounded by village guards
- 3 killed as a result of official defect or neglect
- 3 killed in attacks by unknown assailants in mass demonstrations
- 3 killed, 7 wounded on the border lines
- 1 killed, 9 wounded as a result of explosion of mine and unclaimed explosives
- 5 killed in suspected deaths
- 12 committed suicide, 8 attempted
- 5 injured/suffered violence, 1 raped, 1 suffered sexual harassment as a result of domestic violence
- 3 killed, 2 injured/violence, 12 raped, 3 suffered sexual harassment as a result of violence in public area
- 444 taken in custody
- 106 remanded in custody
- 6 suffered torture and ill treatment in custody
- 6 suffered torture and ill treatment outside detention places
- 36 beaten and injured in mass demonstrations
- 2 suffered violence at school
- 518 sued and imposed sentence
- 872 blacklisted
Total 2,082 violations of rights in 2014