The European Court of Human Rights today condemned Turkey for punishing prisoners who “sang hymns and recited poems” in 2016, honoring the dead prisoners during a security operation in Turkish prisons in 2000.
The two detainees in the Edirne prison (Edirne) who appealed to the Court had read poems in December 2016 along with other detainees and sang hymns in memory of the detainees who lost their lives during Operation Return to Life, which carried out by security forces in Turkish prisons in late 2000, the Court recalled in its ruling.
On December 19, 2000, Turkish gendarmerie forces raided several Turkish prisons to end hunger strikes by far-left prisoners protesting the construction of one- to three-person prisons to replace the then-crowded prisons. prisons.
Thirty detainees had lost their lives at the time, some of whom set themselves on fire, as well as two gendarmes. Images of the attack and the self-immolation had shocked Turkey and European public opinion at the time.
In January 2017, the prison administration decided to punish the two detainees, depriving them for a month of any means of communication, on the grounds that their act of singing hymns and shouting slogans for no reason constituted a disciplinary offense, provided by the Turkish legislation.
The European Court of Human Rights, the Council of Europe’s judiciary, today acquitted the two detainees, condemning Turkey for violating freedom of expression guaranteed by Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights.
See all the news
Follow Skai.gr on Google News
and be the first to know all the news
.
