Boycott Turkish resorts
JIM GIBNEY was national organiser of the National
Anti-H-Block/Armagh Committee during the 1981 hunger strike in
Ireland. Last week, 20 years later, he attended a meeting to
highlight a remarkably similar and equally harrowing struggle in
Turkey. Thirty prisoners died in an attack on a prison in
December and a further 29 prisoners and relatives have died on
hunger strike. The following is his reaction to their plight.
Turkey is roughly 1,500 miles from Ireland. It is widely viewed
as a popular holiday destination. Common parlance has it that the
beer and food are cheap, the beaches are great, the sun always
shines and the people are friendly.
But that is not the Turkey I and a few hundred people experienced
in the Roddy's club in Belfast last Wednesday night. Turkey's
sun-kissed seductive veil slipped and we saw another, more
sinister, darker side that is largely unknown to the people of
Ireland.
Last October, political prisoners in Turkish gaols started a
hunger strike. To date, 29 young men and women, prisoners and
their supporters have died. Two were teenage sisters. Many more
are seriously ill. Alongside this, the state's forces have tried
to ruthlessly crush the will of some 10,000 political prisoners.
That story unfolded through video and photographic exhibition at
the Roddy's meeting.
The meeting was organised by Jim `Flash' McVeigh and Alec
McCrory, both just recently back from separate trips to Turkey's
capital, Istanbul. Both men are former H-Block prisoners.
They brought back a harrowing tale of state oppression in the
prisons and on the streets that has been met by heroic resistance
inside and out. Their story reminded all of us of the epic
struggle here for political status between 1976 and 1981. Indeed,
for me throughout the two-hour meeting, the images shown on the
Turkish video and photographic exhibition were strikingly similar
to those from the H-Blocks and Armagh Women's prison during that
time.
Turkish prisoners on hunger strike bore an uncanny resemblance to
Raymond McCartney and Brendan Hughes when they were on hunger
strike in the H-Blocks in October 1980: gaunt, bearded and
defiant.
A remarkable, yet unbearably tragic and sad feature, of the
Turkish hunger strike is the deaths on hunger strike of relatives
and supporters of the prisoners. In a poor working class area on
the outskirts of Istanbul, there is a number of what are
popularly known as `Death Fast Houses'. They are so called
because in them people hunger strike in support of the prisoners.
Already eight people have died. Among them have been the mother
of a prisoner and a sister.
In recent days, reports from Istanbul indicate that the military
have thrown a cordon around the district and they are harassing
anyone entering and leaving it. The people are fearful that the
military will attack them and the prisoners have threatened that
if they do attack then they will immolate themselves inside the
gaol. This is not an idle threat as a number of prisoners have
burnt themselves to death in protest before.
The video from Turkey, which contained remarkable and disturbing
footage, lasted for just over half and hour. Essentially, it told
the story of the violent attack last December by Turkey's
military forces on one of ten prisons holding political
prisoners. Three thousand troops and police, armed to the teeth,
were used in the assault.
The purpose behind the attack was to move the prisoners from
their accommodation that was dormitory and communal, with the
prisoners running their own lives, to cellular and isolation
conditions where prison warders would dictate how the prisoners
live.
In our terms, it is the equivalent of the time when the British
government introduced criminalisation in March 1976, closed the
Cages of Long Kesh, which housed republicans and loyalists, and
opened the notorious H-Blocks. The Turkish prisons are known as
`F' Type'.
The military bombarded the prisoners, men and women, with live
rounds, tear and nerve gas bombs and stun grenades. They set fire
to the prisoners' belongings to smoke them out. When they
captured them they handcuffed them singularly and in groups,
dragged them down flights of stairs, battoned them and kicked
them.
The soldiers who led this attack were fortified with all the
paraphernalia a military state can give them. They wore heavy
protective clothing, crash helmets, and gas masks.
On display, inside this prison, in the midst of this fearsome
attack was the naked power of an uncaring oppressive regime. I
thought of Pinochet's Chile.
But yet watching the prisoners reaction to this assault you could
also see what Laurence McKeown and Brian Campbell dramatically
capture in their soon to be released film about the H-Blocks,
`H3': the violent power of the state, no matter how ruthlessly
exercised, was nonetheless dispensed nervously by the guards,
with no certainty to the outcome.
During wing shifts in the H-Blocks, naked prisoners were beaten
into a squat position over a mirror on the ground; they were made
run a gauntlet of baton wielding warders, they were kicked and
then thrown into empty, cold cells and starved of adequate food.
Yet when it was over they sang republican songs defiantly and
continued their protest for political status.
I watched the Turkish prisoners' reaction to the violence from
the military. Their faces, their eyes, showed no fear. While
their attackers were safe inside their body armour, the
defenceless prisoners emerged triumphant. In the H-Blocks,
republican prisoners defiantly sang songs. In this Turkish prison
the prisoners held up clenched fists and shouted victory slogans.
When the raid was over, 30 prisoners, many of them hunger
strikers, were dead, hundreds more were badly injured. Film
footage from the morgue, where the dead prisoners were taken for
autopsies, showed that their killers savagely mutilated them
before killing them, a telling sign that those with power fear
the powerless, even at the point where they appear to overwhelm
them.
I wondered could the armed guardians of this regime debase
themselves any further? And then I thought of Slobadan Milosivic
facing trial in the
International Court of Justice and wondered why no one has
demanded that his Turkish equivalent face a similar trial for
abusing these prisoners.
The debate that followed the video concentrated on what the
people of Belfast and Ireland could do to support the Turkish
prisoners. It was agreed to contact the European Union
Commissioner in Belfast and oppose Turkey's entry into the EU, to
hold a picket outside the EU's office in Belfast to highlight
this demand; to organise pickets outside travel agencies
promoting Turkey as a holiday resort and calling on people to
boycott Turkey; to send messages of protest to the Turkish
government and messages of solidarity to the prisoners.
In 1980-'81, the British government tried and failed to block
news about the hunger strikes getting out to the international community. The
Turkish government is trying to do the same today.
In this, the 20th anniversary of the H-Block hunger strikes,
republicans all over Ireland must mobilise as wide as possible
political opinion in support of the Turkish prisoners.
The Turkish government must be forced to concede the prisoners'
demands or face political isolation as an inhuman regime unworthy
of respect.
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