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Turkey: Member of Women's Movement raped and tortured by police.

Source: 
WLUML Networkers
Police have failed to investigate the abuse or punish the perpetrators and an issue of a newspaper that reported the crime has been confiscated.
According to the complaint made to the Human Rights Association in Turkey, a young Kurdish woman who was leaving her home at around 2:00 pm on 21 June was stopped by four plain-clothes armed police officers, saying they had come from the police headquarters. When she said that the home owner whom they were asking about was not in, they nevertheless used threats and forced her inside.
The officers searched the house but did not find anything incriminating. Two of them forced the woman to take her clothes off and sexually assaulted her, accompanied by threats and insults. They did not write a report on the house search and did not show any documents. They threatened the woman not to "get involved in politics about Kurdish issues" and warned that "other women rights activists working in similar projects will be treated the same way."

According to a Human Rights Watch report, police violence in Turkey has been exacerbated by changes to the law on police powers made in June 2007, which give police excessively broad discretion to use lethal force and encourage arbitrary stops and searches by police. The problem is compounded by the failure to adequately investigate abuses when complaints are made.

This attack against the Women of the Democratic Free Women's Movement (DÖKH), as well as numerous operations against, and arrests of, other women’s activists, is believed to be aimed at weakening the struggle of Kurdish women against male hegemony and at blocking a political and democratic solution to the Kurdish question.

In 1990, an institution that serves as a liaison between the Turkish state and society on the issue of women's rights and problems, the General Directorate on the Status and Problems of Women, was founded in line with the requirements of the United Nations Convention on Elimination of All Kinds of Discrimination against Women. On 26 December 2006, The Protocol on "The Role of the Police Forces in the Prevention of Violence against Women and the Applicable Procedures Project" was signed by the General Directorate On The Status Of Women (GDSW) and the Ministry of Interior General Directorate of Security Affairs. The Protocol was developed pursuant to provisions of Prime Ministry Circular (No:2006/17) On Measures To Prevent Violence Acts Against Women and Children And Crimes In The Name Of Honour and Custom.

03 August

Source: WLUML Networkers

Submitted on Sun, 08/02/2009 - 23:00
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