TIHV - Today early in the morning, human rights defenders, Human Rights Association (IHD) and democratic institutions were raided. In eight provinces, more than 30 politicians, mayors, opinion leaders and human rights defenders –including İHD’s Vice General Chairperson and Chairperson of Diyarbakır Province Branch, Lawyer Muharrem Erbey, Democratic Society Party’s mayors, Democratic Society Congress’ spokesperson Hatip Dicle- were detained.These people and institutions were allegedly linked with an organisation called KCK. IHD’s Diyarbakır Province Branch was attempted to be searched without a search warrant and due to the objections the search was done after getting a judge rule in five minutes. As it happened before in every two or three years IHD was raided, our archives were scattered and our documents were confiscated. IHD’s Diyarbakır Province Branch has been working on political murders by unknown assailants and forced disappearance cases and gathered our archive which is 21 year-old. Mass graves that had been excavated recently were put into practice with the help of these documents.
Can there be such an unlawful practice? Can a search warrant be ruled like this? If in a country, the demands of the police were met by the judiciary without any investigation, can someone say that human rights are under the protection of the judiciary?
The police forces that are loyal to the executive power, i.e. the government on the one hand and the judiciary on the other have been generating new coercive attitudes.
For this reason we qualify this kind of coercion as coercion of the system. The system has been hindering the solution of the Kurdish Issue with peaceful and democratic ways with these methods.
On the one hand the political parties were closed by the Constitution Court and on the other hand political parties, human rights defenders and democratic organisations were intimidated with police and judicial mechanisms. The responsibility of the executive and judicial powers can clearly be seen in the violations.
Peace and democracy are in contradiction with coercions, detentions, search and confiscation rules that have been targeting human rights defenders and democratic public opinion. Then the discourse of “democratic initiative”, Kurdish initiative could not be realised. We protest the coercion.
We want freedom. Put an end to the confiscation of the documents in IHD’s Diyarbakır Province Branch! Our chairperson and other detainees should be released immediately.
HUMAN RIGHTS FOUNDATION OF TURKEY
