Kurdish Info 13.05.2010- Cemil Cicek,Vice-Prime Minister is in Geneva, to participating to the Universal Periodic Review Mechanism Meeting (EPİM), which will continue until 14th May. Cicek spoke of the children who are given sentences in demonstrations for throwing stones at police and said: "They're actually not children; it is only in physical appearance that they are small but in fact they are not small children.” The Geneva Community Centre demonstrated its reactions to Cicek words: "this is corruption!"
Vice- Prime Minister Cemil Cicek, joined with a crowd delegation to the United Nations in Geneva under the Human Rights Council, Universal Periodic Review Mechanism Meeting (EPİM). Cemil Cicek delivered a speech on issues that were evaluated like anti-discrimination, cultural rights and children’s rights and said: "In Turkey non-discrimination is guaranteed by the constitution. There is no discrimination between sexual, religious and ethnic identity.”
Cicek also referred to children’s rights issues, and said a draft law on the children's should be judged in the context of the TMK is on the agenda of the General Assemble of Turkey. This will provide arrangements for children's courts and no longer will children be tried by the children’s courts.
Cemil Cicek said that in some regions of Turkey (such as Kurdish regions) when the family make the identity card for their children they declare the age as less than it actually is, which means that their identity card makes them appear younger, but in reality they are not children, claimed Cicek, saying that we have to take account of this reality!
Geneva Community Centre (Halkevi) made a written statement on the Cicek's remarks and described them as "immoral". The community centre reminded the Child rights Contract in statement, and said "Erdal Eren was 17 when executed, Uğur Kaymaz was just 12 years-old. In the last 20 years it noted that 370 Kurdish children had been murdered in Turkey."
The statement concluded: "In Turkey, we are shocked to see the images of the children tortured in the street; they have heavy punishment in the courts as adults and they are in prison for ten years we see every day in the headlines of the newspapers and on our television screens. Saying 'we do not attach handcuffs to children’s hands' does not mean anything. Yes, in our country children’s hands are not clasped, because the wrists and arms of our children are broken by the police in uniforms."
