We Are Asking Civil Society To Inspect The Detention Centers

The Human Rights Presidency, a government body, declares that its committees will inspect the police and gendarmerie detention centers unannounced and they want at least one member of them to come from the non-governmental organizations.

Tolga Korkut

We Are Asking Civil Society To Inspect The Detention Centers

The head of the Human Rights Presidency of the Prime Ministry of the Turkish Republic (İHB) Hasan Fendoğlu told Bianet that they want the provincial and sub-provincial human rights boards of the non-governmental organizations to participate in the committees that will inspect the police and gendarmerie detention centers.

Fendoğlu stated that they informed all the governorships about their intention that the provincial and sub-provincial human rights boards should visit the detention centers at least once a month without prior notification and that at least one person in a three-person committee must be a member of a non-governmental organization.

Fendoğlu adds, “The representatives from the non-governmental organizations need not be a committee member. If they are denied participation in these committees they should inform us immediately.”

Fendoğlu: In order to stop torture, there needs to be unannounced visits

While Fendoğlu states that the unannounced visits are an important tool in preventing torture, he also reminds that the provincial and sub-provincial human rights boards are headed by governors/assistant governors or sub-provincial governors, and therefore the participation of the non-governmental organizations is needed, since they want these visits to be reliable.

However, visiting the prisons is problematical, since they are under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Justice; but he said that they do communicate and follow up such intentions by the organizations defending rights to the directorship of prisons.

“We want the Optional Protocol to the Convention Against Torture to be ratified"

Saying that they want the Optional Protocol against torture to be ratified by Turkey, Fendoğlu added that Turkey should be prepared to set up the mechanisms stipulated by this protocol.

The Optional Protocol, which Turkey signed in September 2005 but has not ratified yet, is an instrument aimed at preventing torture and cruel treatment by opening to visitation all sorts of official and unofficial detention and freedom deprivation centers through national and international mechanisms.

“We want 2008 to become the year the human rights were promoted”

This year İHB will organize consulting meetings with non-governmental organizations, the human rights centers of the universities and the journalists. The first one of these meetings took place in Ankara on May 14.

Fendoğlu tells that the meetings are not restricted, but open to everyone.

There will be two consulting meetings, one about the violence against women on June 18 and another one about the prevention of torture and Optional Protocol on June 28, and they are planning to organize a campaign to end violence in schools in autumn.

Stating that the results of the meetings will be presented to the government, Fendoğlu says, “Only seven months are left, but we want 2008 to become the year the human rights were promoted.”

“The human rights must be strong both in public space and in civil society”

According to Fendoğlu, there are more than 20 official human rights units to serve the needs of the public and this multiplicity in numbers diminishes the effect these organizations should have. He added that the human rights units in official/public space need to be autonomous. “We need to work together with civil society.”

“The human rights need to be strengthened in all areas; in the media as well. We want to look into the possibilities of working together. What we are saying is not ‘Let us work under the same roof’, but collaboration. We realize that we are a government body.” (TK/GG/TB)