SAVE HUNGER STRIKERS IN TURKISH JAILS
Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams has called on the Dublin government to use its influence on the UN Security Council and in the EU to put pressure on the Turkish government to end the hunger strikes in that country's prisons. Nineteen people have died thus far in the prison protests.
250 political prisoners, belonging mainly to leftist groups, began refusing food at the end of last year to protest their transfer from large, dormitory-type wards to new so-called F-type prisons, with cells housing one to three people. They say the new cells leave prisoners isolated and more vulnerable to human rights abuses. Human Rights Watch and the Council of Europe have also expressed concerns over the new regime.
Gerry Adams said that, on the 20th anniversary of the 1981 Irish Hunger Strike, he is ``very conscious of the pain and suffering endured by hunger strikers and their families and I would urge the Turkish government to act in a humane manner and bring the situation to a just end''.
It is now imperative that action is taken to ensure that no more lives are lost in the hunger strike, Adams said. ``I am calling on the Irish government, through its membership of the UN Security Council and as a member state of the European Union to raise this matter both with the Turkish government and internationally to achieve a positive resolution.
Adams also called for a public inquiry into events surrounding the transfers to the new prisons last December, in which 30 prisoners were killed and countless others injured. This incident and reports of persistent torture and other abuses in Turkish jails need to be investigated, he said. (Full story page 10)
![[An Phoblacht]](http://republican-news.org/graphics/title_gifs/aprn.gif)