JINHA

ISTANBUL – Women arrested during the Tuesday occupation of an Istanbul ministry building were released from police custody yesterday. The arrestees say the world needs to hear about the abuses against women and children prisoners in Şakran Prison.

On Tueday, a group of women from the Socialist Democratic Party (SDP) entered the Istanbul provincial office of the Ministry of Family and Social Policies to protest the continuing impunity for guards at the notorious Şakran Prison, in the city of Izmir. There, guards have been holding pregnant juveniles in solitary confinement and denying them treatment, among other abuses.

SDP member Sinem Şahin said that “we are calling on all women and all members of the press to stand up for this.” Many have noted that the silence in public opinion on abuses against women’s prisoners in Turkey permits continued impunity.

The women managed to realize a banner drop when police entered the building and violently arrested them. Police also arrested two journalists reporting on the event from outside the building.

Police held the ten arrestees until yesterday, bringing them before a judge and attempting to force them to testify. Journalist Ezgi Aydın says this is a new procedure permitted by Turkey’s recently-passed Internal Security Law, which many say contributes to a police state in the country.

Ezgi, from the newspaper Gelecek (Future), said the reporters could hear the sound of the violent arrest and tried to enter the building to photograph the police violence going on inside. There, police said that because the women did not have the yellow press cards issued by the state to select journalists in Turkey, they “were not journalists.” That was when police handcuffed them behind their back and boarded them into the paddy wagon.

Journalist Esin Kavruk, from the newspaper Türkiye Gerçeği (Turkey’s Reality), said they were covering the occupation because what happened in Şakran was a crime against humanity that needed to be covered.

(ekip/dc/fk/cm)