s.j. laizer journalism, photography, film research 6 Avenue Road, Hunstanton, Norfolk, PE36 5BW (W) 0181 1804 fax 0181 802 9963 e-mail adc86@dial.pipex.com

Council of Europe Committee for the Prevention of Torture F.A.O. Ingrid Lycke Ellingsen First vice-president

5 April 1999

Dear Ingrid Lycke Ellingsen,

Re: Is the goal of the Turkish authorities to break Mr. Abdullah Ocalan's mind, body, and soul?

Will the world be content that justice has been served -- that Mr. Ocalan has been given a 'fair trial' -- if confronted by the humiliating spectacle of the Kurdish leader brought before Turkish television cameras as a broken man tortured into 'confessions' of treason in the service of Turkish nationalism?

I write this letter to you with that concern as a journalist receiving reports directly from Mr. Ocalan's Turkish defense team. I am deeply concerned about the steep curve of Mr. Ocalan's physical and psychological decline a result of the extreme conditions of his captivity in solitary confinement on Imrali Island. Furthermore, I am alarmed by the erosion of the security of life and freedoms of those representing him.

On the basis of our past experience, I trust that the CPT will not be content with the lip-service paid by the Turkish authorities to human rights, nor satisfied by reports composed to assuage international public opinion as to what is really going on in Imrali behind closed doors.

What surprised me about the appendix to your letter to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Ankara, dated 22 March 1999, was that despite an almost universal understanding of the cynical and barbaric manner in which the Turkish authorities conduct their affairs against ordinary unassimilated Kurds, they are nonetheless approached as if their treatment of the most celebrated Kurdish political prisoner this century is above board, transparent and in conformity with international standards of law and human rights. The situation is quite clearly not so.

Since Mr. Ocalan's abduction and detention on February 1999, the political intentions of the Turkish authorities have been expressed with a strident racist militarism which commentators liken to language popular at the time of the military coup of 1980.

To date, the Turkish authorities have expressed these intentions in some of the following ways: through public reiterations by the office of the Chief of Staff of the Kemalist code of 'one nation, one people, one flag, one language...' and the overt threat this poses to any minority group in Turkey; the arrest of thousands of democratically-minded people who have called for a political settlement of Turkey's Kurdish problem, who have then been promptly charged as 'separatists' or 'terrorists'; physical attacks upon members of Mr. Ocalan's Turkish defense team; death threats to them and to members of their family; deliberate obstruction of the lawyers' access to their client; the failure of the police and the government to provide protection, conversely, incitement by these same quarters for the Turkish populace to mob and attack the lawyers; public calls by the authorities via Turkish television for ordinary Turkish citizens to attack supporters of Kurdish rights, or Mr. Ocalan, of the PKK, HADEP, etc.; the refutation of the rights of Mr. Ocalan to prepare a defense of his own free will; the obstruction to date by the authorities for the lawyers to meet with their client in confidence and discuss his case in confidence; Mr. Ocalan's continuing isolation from the outside world; his deprivation of the right to read, to obtain news, letters, have a radio etc. (78 days); the deficiency of regular monitoring of Mr. Ocalan's health and the conditions of his detention by independent international observers, by the CPT, by international lawyers.

I am astonished that the CPT could write to the Foreign Ministry of Turkey to suggest that Mr. Ocalan 'benefits from appropriate human contact' ... from 'suitably - skilled staff members'. This is Turkey, not, for example, Sweden. In Turkey, there is no neutral position, no professionalism free of political bias amongst government, police and military officials. Every day, the Turkish authorities are promising the Turkish people Mr. Ocalan's blood. On this basis, there can be no more justice for Mr. Ocalan than for the millions of oppressed and displaced Kurds in Turkey.

Unlike the West's decisive stand on ethnic Albanians fleeing atrocities in Kosovo, regrettably Turkey's brutalisation of its ethnic Kurds is allowed to go on with little other than veiled cautions whilst regular arms shipments continue.

Mr. Ocalan has spearheaded a Kurdish movement little different from that of the Kurds in Iraq. However, whilst the West funds the Iraqi Kurds and toasts its leaders, Turkey enjoys the right to carry out forcible assimilation, to attempt to erase the Kurds from the map under the guise of 'fighting terrorism' and to criminalise Kurdish leaders and Kurdish institutions. It is for this reason that Mr. Ocalan is 'on trial' and with him the Kurdish nation in its struggle for the right to survival. I urge you without delay to organize a visit to Mr. Ocalan on Imrali Island before international standards of justice and decency are further compromised and ridiculed in the eyes of us all.

Yours sincerely,

Sheri Laizer