Respect for Human Rights on İstiklal: Peace over War

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Human rights defenders ended their human rights week event with their march of respect for human rights from Tünel Square to Galatasaray.

Human Rights Association (İHD) İstanbul Branch and Human Rights Foundation of Turkey (TİHV) İstanbul Representation members started their march by commemorating Tahir Elçi who was murdered in Diyarbakır and co-founder of İHD.

CLICK - DİYARBAKIR BAR PRESIDENT TAHİR ELÇİ KILLED

Riot squad blocking the road before the group started marching, later on opened the road and moved forward in front of the group.  

Fincancı: Hear our scream

TİHV President, Şebnem Korur Fincancı, speaking in front of Galatasaray High School said they completed the week in a period when the right violations have intensified but struggle for human rights never ends.

“It has been 68 years since saying ‘Never again’. We are trying to be heard in a geography in which hundreds of people have been massacred in a war waged to re-define the borders and that human right violations hit peek”.

“Are you aware of the incidents?”

Fincancı explained doctors cannot properly treat patients due to lack of electricity in Kurdish cities where curfews and operations take place, and wounded ones cannot reach at hospitals.

“Woundedn people are condemned to death since hospitals have been turned to armories. Are you aware of these?”

“We don’t want new 1915 incidents”

Fincancı noted they witnessed violation rights deepening and they don’t want to sustain this witness.

“You please don’t witness this either. Get directly involved in, we try to directly get involved as well.

“We don’t want people whom we live together be massacred, annihilated again. We want neither new 1915, nor 1938 incidents to occur again”.

Boztoprak: Human rights being transgressed

İHD İstanbul Branch President, Zeynep Ceren Boztoprak, reading joint statement in the name of the two organizations said, “We are unfortunately not the majority, and unfortunately we are at a time which those transgressing human rights violate human rights by using the whole power of state mechanism”.

“We witness bad things. We witness that the ones who are supposed to stand by us as witnessing the bad things are far from us”.

Boztoprak said human rights defenders are not desperate nor hopeless despite this situation. She called to everyone to support struggle for human rights.

“We know that as long as there are people fighting, resisting, there is hope regardless of our number. Their power will not suffice to beat human rights and freedoms. Human dignity will beat torture, and right usurpation”. (BK/TK)