10 November 2009 / TODAY’S ZAMAN WITH WIRES, İSTANBUL
Political prisoners in Syria’s Adra and Sednaya prisons, supporters of the Democratic Union Party (PYD), the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and Sittar, a woman’s organization, have launched a hunger strike in protest of the bad conditions in the prisons.
Syrian Human Rights Committee (SHRC) has received information that some of these prisoners started an open-ended hunger strike on Oct. 30 against the harsh conditions and unfair judgments of the Supreme State Security Court.Dozens of young Kurds have allegedly faced very harsh conditions in Syrian prisons, hidden in isolation from the outside world, with minimum medical services. It is also reported that the prisoners stay in individual cells deprived of contact with each other and with their families and are subjected to various types of psychological and physical torture.
The International Support Kurds in Syria Association (SKS) announced on Friday that the hunger strike aims for the prisoners to obtain the right to a fair trial, to end their isolation, to access the prison yard, be granted visits by their families and have access to the media. The Syrian government uses the state of emergency that has been in place since 1963 to imprison anyone accused of involvement with a Kurdish political party, and these arrests are designed to intimidate those who want to work to bring about self-determination for the Kurdish community.
