human rights watch

torsdag 28 januari 2016

Turkish Terror State burying its victims in the ground without families according to new law.









Turkish Terror State burying its victims in the ground without families according to new law.
Hiding their crimes without any proper autopsys.

Siyasin Buruntekin fights back tears of anger
at how her aunt was fatally shot and then buried by Turkish security
forces without the relatives being informed.After visiting the grave for the first time, the 34-year-old Kurdish
woman relates how Ayse Buruntekin went out during the curfew to fetch
milk for her baby from the neighbours in Silopi near the three-point
border with Syria and Iraq.She died from a gunshot to the neck. "The police simply buried her
without telling the family," her niece says.A new law that went into force on January 7, as 24-hour curfews were
imposed in many Kurdish areas, allows burial without ceremony if the
body - even if identified - has not been collected by relatives.
The curfews are part of the army's offensive against the Kurdish
Patriotic Revolutionary Youth Movement (YDG-H), which has seized
control of parts of cities and towns in south-eastern Turkey.The aim of the new law is to prevent funerals from becoming a
rallying point for supporters of the YDG-H, seen by the government as
an offshoot of the banned Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).Since the beginning of the offensive in mid-December, dozens of
civilians have reportedly lost their lives. Kurds living under
conditions of total curfew can hardly collect the bodies of relatives
from the morgues.Siyasin Buruntekin says the police did not even inform the family
where her aunt was buried, but people living near the cemetery
observed the burial from their homes and passed on the information.'No longer a citizen'
"Erdogan is personally responsible for this," she says, echoing the
view of many Kurds that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan should take
the blame for the escalation of violence in the region. "I can't see
myself as a citizen of this country any more."The family of Taybet Inan is just as angry. His 57-year-old wife was
on her way back home from the neighbours when she was shot in the leg
metres from her own front door, says Chalid Inan, 60.He relates how he threw his wife a rope to drag her onto their
property, but without success. "She was alive up to the next day. She
called out repeatedly: 'Don't come out, otherwise you will be killed
too'," Chalid Inan says.His brother Abdullah Inan tells how he contacted a member of
parliament for the pro-Kurdish HDP opposition party, who arranged an
ambulance to pick up the injured woman."The police stopped the ambulance at the top of the road," Abdullah
Inan says. He then phoned the police. "The police officer asked for
the address, and after I gave it to them, the house was fired on."The woman's body was collected only after eight days. "The police
took the body to the morgue," Abdullah Inan says.He next received a phone call from the police informing the family
that Taybet Inan would be buried. During the call, the officer cited
the new law.Eight relatives from a village not under curfew were allowed to
attend, but no one from Silopi itself. Not even Taybet Inan's husband
could say his final farewell to her.In the largely Kurdish city of Diyarbakir, Guler Seviktek secured the
release of the body of her 25-year-old brother by going on hunger
strike for three weeks.Mesut Seviktek had been fighting for the YDG-H in the city, part of
which has been under curfew since December 2, when he was killed on
December 23."Why won't the state return the body," his sister queried during the
hunger strike, alleging that the new law was directed purely against
Kurds.Guler Seviktek said: "They're even frightened of our dead."

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