ANKARA, April 24 (Reuters) - Turkish civic groups and international human-rights
watchdogs urged Turkey on Tuesday to seek an end to a mass hunger strike against prison
conditions in which 17 people have died and dozens more are gravely ill.

Some 800 prisoners and prisoners' relatives are on hunger strikes to demand that Turkey
drop plans to move mainly leftist inmates from dormitory wards to cell-based jails where
they say they will at greater risk of torture.

The government has vowed it will never negotiate and accuses "terrorists" of orchestrating
the hunger strikes.

But the deaths of 14 inmates and three relatives of prisoners have increased pressure on
Turkey to take action to ward off more deaths. Activists say 50 people are on the verge of
dying of starvation.

The Justice Ministry said on Tuesday the Council of Europe's Committee for the Prevention
of Torture (CPT) had visited Turkey last week to meet government officials and prisoners'
advocates.

"The CPT delegation expects urgent actions to be taken to bring to an end the hunger
strikes," the ministry quoted the committee as saying.

The ministry also said the CPT welcomed draft legislation that would give some prisoners
access to communal areas in jails in a bid to end the protest.

The government on Tuesday sent parliament two amendments to an "anti-terrorism" law to
allow prisoners limited time in recreational areas, such as sports halls and libraries, in the
so-called F-type jails which have cells that hold between one and three people.

Some activists have criticised the changes because they only apply to inmates who agree to
attend training programmes. Those imprisoned for their political views would resist such
rehabilitation, rights workers say.

CALLS FOR CHANGES

Allegations of police brutality in Turkey's prisons are common, and the European Union,
which Turkey aspires to join, has said Ankara must improve its human rights performance
before membership talks can begin.

London-based Amnesty International said the new maximum-security penitentiaries impose
a regime of solitary confinement on inmates.

"Many prisoners have allegedly gone without human contact for days, apart from roll calls,
which are said to be frequently accompanied by violence," the group said in a statement
faxed to Reuters on Tuesday.

Turkey defends the new prisons as crucial to breaking the influence of political prisoners and
organised criminals in teeming wards, where up to 100 people are incarcerated. Officials say
the F-type jails meet European standards.

Justice Minister Hikmet Sami Turk met members of a lawyers' group who staged a protest in
downtown Ankara to call for improvements in the F-type system.

But the group's leader said the talks amounted to a "deaf dialogue.

Separately, members of the Public Sector Workers Union (KESK) gathered in the capital to
demand the government halt prison transfers, attend to the medical needs of incarcerated
protesters and launch an inquiry into last year's prison raids in which two soldiers and 30
inmates died.

Security forces stormed 20 prisons in December to carry out inmate transfers and force an
end to the hunger strikes.
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The Kurdistan Observer
www.kurdistanobserver.com