Thursday, January 16, 2025
Islamabad (News International / Pakistan Point News - 16th January, 2025) The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders, Mary Lalor, has expressed deep concern over the prolonged detention of nine rights activists in Turkey.
She said that Turkey’s use of anti-terrorism laws to silence human rights defenders and critical voices against the government is disturbing.
In this way, these people have been given long prison sentences, which is tantamount to abdicating the country’s human rights obligations.
The people imprisoned in Turkey are among the prominent figures working for the promotion and protection of human rights against whom the government has taken legal action on terrorism charges.
The Special Rapporteur said that after assuming her duties in May 2020, she wrote letters to the Turkish authorities twice on this issue. The government also responded to a letter she received, for which she is grateful, but she expressed disappointment that their work for human rights has been criminalized.
Unfair legal proceedings
The eight people detained in Turkey belong to the Progressive Lawyers Association, which represents victims of police violence and those facing legal action by the government for expressing their opinions.
The lawyers, who were sentenced to 13 years in prison, were arrested between 2018 and 2019 and charged with being members of a terrorist organization, while two were also charged with propagandizing for a terrorist organization.
Marie Lalor has said that the legal proceedings against them do not meet international standards of fair trial and due process.
In 2020, Turkey’s Supreme Court upheld the lawyers’ convictions and convicted seven of them under the country’s anti-terrorism code. The arrest of the eighth individual (a woman) was carried out in a separate operation and was tried separately on terrorism charges, in which she was sentenced to 11 years in prison in 2022, which was upheld by a regional court last year.
The ninth individual convicted, a member of the Malatya Bar Association, was sentenced to 10 years in prison after legal proceedings under the terrorism-related provisions of the Turkish Criminal Code. She was arrested in 2016 on the basis of evidence presented by one of her clients about her alleged links to the Gülen movement, who later admitted that she had been forced to do so.
The Turkish government holds the movement responsible for the 2016 coup.
Call for compliance with international law
The Special Rapporteur said that all of these human rights activists have been held under extremely tight security, despite a previous record of working peacefully for human rights.
One of them has been held in solitary confinement for almost three years, without any specific official orders in this regard.
He urged the Turkish government to ensure that the accused are not mistreated, in accordance with international human rights law, and that those serving long sentences have their appeals heard fairly in higher courts.
Marie Lalor is in contact with the Turkish authorities on this matter.
Independent experts and rapporteurs
Impartial experts or special rapporteurs are appointed under the special procedures of the UN Human Rights Council and are not part of the UN staff and do not receive remuneration for their work.
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