Sister of prisoner who died after torture announces candidacy 'to be voice of prisoners'

Photo: *Asya Gezer and her sister Garibe Gezer, who died in Kandıra Prison

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Asya Gezer, who lost both her brother and sister in two highly political events, explains to bianet why she decided to run as a prospective parliamentary candidate for the Green Left (Yeşil Sol) Party ahead of the May 14 elections.

She said her top priority will be prisons, with the suspicious death of her sister in prison being the primary motive to run in the elections.

"My sister was killed in prison, and the footage was shown to the public, but apart from a specific segment, no one discussed what is happening in prisons. Prisons are not visible in this country, rights violations are normalized, and prisons are accepted as normal. We all need to know that this is not normal," she said.

"You cannot deprive people of their rights, torture them, or take away their right to life just because they are in prison. We, the relatives of prisoners, witness all the violations firsthand and live with them. But not only us, but the whole society should feel this problem. That's why I applied for candidacy."

Sexual assault and torture in prison

The 36-year-old Asya Gezer, born in the Dargeçit district of Mardin, graduated from the Department of Art History at Ege University. After graduation, she worked various jobs before starting to work at the Mardin Metropolitan Municipality.

In 2014, her brother Bilal succumbed to police gunfire during the October 6-7 Kobanî protests that erupted when ISIS laid siege to the city of Kobanî, a Kurdish town in northern Syria.

Thousands of people went out to protest across the country against a possible massacre. When the demonstrations turned violent in the Kurdish-majority regions, 46 people were killed, 682 were wounded, and 323 were arrested, according to the Human Right Association (İHD).

In 2016, her sister Garibe, who served as an executive of the Democratic Regions Party (DBP) in Dargeçit, was arrested for her political work and charged with 28 years of imprisonment.

When Aysa was also arrested in 2016 in a separate case, she had to leave her job, and her life started to revolve around visiting her sibling in prison.

However, when on December 9, 2021, Garibe was sexually assaulted and tortured by wardens in Kocaeli Kandıra Type-F Closed Prison and suspiciously lost her life in an alleged suicide, Asya decided to run in the May 14 parliamentary elections as part of the Green Left Party, under which the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) fields its candidates to circumvent a pending closure case.

'I lost a part of myself in prison'

Aysa vows to address human rights violations in prisons.

"If I become a candidate and I am elected, my top priority will be prisons. I will work to prevent deaths in prisons from being normalized as suicides and to prevent rights violations from being taken for granted.

"I lost a part of myself in prison, not just Garibe, but many other prisoners have also lost their lives in prisons since then. Women, in particular, are subjected to many more human rights violations. I want to be the voice of all prisoners, especially women prisoners."

"We cannot say that there are no problems in prisons because we do not see or hear them or because they are not reported in the news. Prisons are the bleeding wound of this country. Every day, hundreds of prisoners are exiled to other prisons far from their families. They face many rights violations, such as communication bans and solitary confinement, even for minor incidents. I want to be the voice of those in prisons."

(RT/WM/VK)