Wednesday, 21 October 2009
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children Legal safeguards
Legal safeguards for children in police custody were frequently ignored. In March, parliamentary deputy Sema Piskinsüt, former president of the Parliamentary Human Rights Commission, estimated that 90 percent of imprisoned children had been tortured in police custody. In January, nine children under the age of fifteen complained that they had been beaten, forced to remain standing for long periods, and deprived of food, drink and sleep while detained in Viransehir in the province of Sanlžurfa in southeast Turkey.
Local lawyers complained about the ill-treatment and breach of detention procedures, but as of November 2001 no action had been taken against the responsible police officers. A fifteen-year-old detained in April during an Istanbul demonstration against F-type prisons reported that police officers beat him with wooden sticks about the head and body. Medical examination showed extensive bruising and broken teeth. Women reported sexual abuse and rape in police custody. The Women's Commission of the Diyarbakžr Bar stated in February that over the preceding year it had received complaints of sexual assault or rape by police or gendarmes from 123 women. In July, Health Minister Osman Durmus issued a circular which appeared to circumvent a 1999 ban on "virginity examinations" by providing for the expulsion of female medical students proven to be sexually active or engaged in prostitution. The minister later denied that he had authorized the reinstatement of such examinations, but did not rescind the circular. A sixteen-year-old in Van reported that in June she was taken from a gendarmerie post, where she was being questioned for alleged links with the PKK, to a state hospital and there subjected to a forced "virginity test."
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