One minute speech in the European parliament the 1st of April 2004 to Oostlander's report about Turkey's progression towards accession.

By Bent Hindrup Andersen, The June Movement (J).

I would like to take the opportunity to focus on the Turkish human rights organisation - the HRFT.

Last weekend the president of the HRFT, Yavuz Önen, received an award on the annual meeting of my party the June Movement for his and the organisation's courageous fight for human rights in Turkey.

The Turkish human rights organisation is threatened by closure as a consequence of several lawsuits against committee members including Yavuz Önen. The HRFT has five centers for rehabilitation of victims of torture and about one thousand active volunteers.

A closure would have very important consequences for the treatment of the victims of torture in Turkey since no other Turkish organisation can follow in the footsteps of HRFT. The many victims of torture would be left behind and torture is still taking place in the Turkish prisons and policestations.

The state and the authorities are constantly trying to harass the centers with courtcases and the doctors are threatend with the risk of loosing their jobs at the public hospitals if they work for the centers. The centers are actually not even legitimised but so far they have won all the courtcases against the state.

I hereby encourage the European parliament and the Commission to follow closely the Turkish  human rights organisation's possibilities to perform their very important work for human rights in Turkey.

Documents

EP-report on Turkey

Amendments to the report

 printervenlig version