Armenian, Assyrian and Hellenic Genocide News

Greek MPs Condemn Prisoner Treatment In Turkey
by Macedonian Press Agency-00-12-20
Posted: Thursday, December 21, 2000 08:34 pm CST

Athens, 20 December 2000 (12:46 UTC+2)
With a resolution drawn under the initiative of former foreign minister Theodoros Pangalos, 58 Greek parliamentarians have denounced the atrocities and blatant human rights violations pervading Turkey's prisons.

Fifteen prisoners and two soldiers were killed early this morning when Turkish forces stormed the prisons throughout the country in an effort to end a two-month-old hunger strike that prisoners launched to protest plans to transfer them to small prison cells, where they fear abuse by guards. Many of the hunger strikers were on the brink of death after subsisting on sugared water for two months.

Expressing their profound concern, indignation and sorrow for today's violence, the Greek deputies, who span all political parties, call on the President of the Hellenic Parliament to denounce the Turkish regime's tyrannical and undemocratic methods to the European Council's Parliamentary Assembly and to the European Parliament.

Moreover, the parliamentarians ask that the Minister of Foreign Affairs George Papandreou immediately bring the matter forth to international organizations and European Union bodies.

"Once again, the Turkish police and security forces, caring for the 'safety' of political prisoners with methods familiar only to them, raided 20 prisons and dispersed terror and death."

"We do not forget," the resolution reads, "that at the present time there are 12,000 political prisoners in an EU candidate-member, while torture victims from 1981 to date are innumerable.

"Turkey's arbitrary and anachronistic regime didn't miss the chance to show its true colors: a profound disregard for the principles of respect for human rights, the value of human life and the European democratic institutions.".

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