Turkish Parliament’s Rights Panel Defends Prison Raids

The parliamentary Human Rights Commission has defended last week’s crackdown by Turkish security forces on the nation’s prisons that resulted in at least 30 deaths and drew condemnation from rights groups.

“We have met as a commission since the operations and concluded that there have been no violations of human rights here,” Commission Chairman Huseyin Akgul, a member of the far-right Nationalist Action Party, said Wednesday.

He said that the clampdown on 20 prisons to end a hunger strike and to regain control of the facilities was justified.

On Wednesday, another prisoner died of burns sustained during the raids, bringing to 28 the number of inmates killed. Two paramilitary police officers also died in the raids.

Anatolian news agency said Halil Onder of the left-wing Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party-Front died in a hospital. He had been held in Ceyhan prison.

Officials say most of the prisoners who died set themselves on fire rather than end their protest against plans to move them to small cells from large dormitories. The authorities say cells will be easier to control, but protesters fear abuse by guards.

Hundreds of mainly leftist prisoners continued their “death fast” Wednesday. Some have been refusing food and drinking only small amounts of sugared water for 69 days, even those who are hospitalized, Turkish newspapers reported.