Human Rights Defenders Should Be Immediately Released
Human Rights Defenders Nalan Erkem, İlknur Üstün, İdil Eser, Özlem Dalkıran, Günal Kurşun, Veli Acu, Şeyhmuz Özbekli, Nejat Taştan, Ali Gharavi and Peter Steudtner should be released immediately!
Human Rights Joint Platform, jointly established by Human Rights Association, Human Rights Agenda Association, Amnesty International Turkey and Citizens' Assembly, held an exchange meeting on April 7-9, 2017 during which they took a joint decision to conduct a series of training seminars for human rights defenders;
8 human rights defenders and 2 experts, gathered for the training seminar on Istanbul’s Büyükada Island on July 2-7, were taken into custody yesterday (July 5, 2017) before noon. The seminar had been organized with a focus on the acquisition of techniques and skills that would enable human rights defenders to undertake advocacy, especially during extraordinary circumstances.
Human rights defenders, initially held at the Büyükada Police Station, were denied the right to inform their lawyers, families and friends of their arrest due to a confidentiality order issued by the prosecutor's office. We could coincidentally find out the arrest of our fellows, a couple of hours later, at 09:14 p.m. And again because of this restriction decision, we cannot find out the fate of our fellow human rights defenders, whether they are still held on Büyükada, nor their whereabouts if they were transferred elsewhere. The fact that nobody including family members was informed of the arrest of human rights defenders, no information could be obtained because of a restriction order on the investigation suggests that the detentions in question amount to an "incommunicado detention", going beyond the bounds of the state of emergency law.
We bear witness to the positive efforts made by our detained friends to protect and develop human rights and freedoms. Defending human rights is a fundamental human right, as we have repeatedly stressed before.
Families, relatives and lawyers of the arbitrarily detained human rights defenders should be informed of their whereabouts as well as charges laid against them and their situation. According to universal legal norms that Turkey is a part of, state of emergency is not an arbitrary but a legal regime; and there are certain number of fundamental (core) rights that can by no means be restricted. Therefore, such rights of the detained human rights defenders including in particular the right to life as well as the prohibition of torture and degrading treatment, personal freedom and security should be fully respected.
We, human rights defenders, are closely monitoring the charges laid against our friends as well as the circumstances of their detention!
Our fellow human rights defenders should be immediately released!
Civil Society in the Penal System Association, Association for Monitoring Equal Rights, Rights Initiative, Human Rights Association, Human Rights Agenda Association, Women's Coalition, KAOS-GL Association, Pink Life LGBTT Solidarity Association, Human Rights Foundation of Turkey , Amnesty International Turkey, Citizens' Assembly.
