From: Jonupstny-AT-aol.com Date: Thu, 25 Jul 1996 22:28:09 -0400 Subject: Hunger Strike-Reaction in Europe By Fiona Fleck BONN, July 25 (Reuter) - European media and opposition parties rallied support on Thursday for some 150 Turkish prisoners on hunger strike to protest at political detentions, but governments were muted in their response. In Germany, the country most affected outside Turkey because of its two million-strong Turkish community, critics poured scorn on Ankara for what they said were political detentions and human rights abuses in Turkish prisons. ``Now there has to be a concession to the hunger strikers' justifed demand for dignified treatment in prison,'' said a commentator on German television (ARD), dismissing the Bonn government's call on Wednesday to the hunger strikers to give up their protest. Socialist members of the European Parliament said the EU should threaten to block funds for Turkey in budget talks later this year. Their leader Pauline Green said she had written to Turkish Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan voicing concern over the deaths of six strikers. ``The Turkish government have used the institutions of the European Union to gain what they want and have given nothing of what they promised in return,'' Green said. Last year, the European parliament allowed an EU customs union with Turkey to go through after adding amendments meant to assure that human rights were respected. London did not comment on the protest, but British police said 20 demonstrators had briefly occupied a Turkish Airlines office in protest against conditions in Turkish jails. French officials called on Ankara to find a solution to the strike that respected human rights but did not elaborate. After a third night of firebombings of Turkish shops in Germany, German media condemned the attacks which prosecutors say could be the work of Turkish left-wingers showing solidarity with the protest back home. ``These attacks on Turkish shops in Germany are senseless and counter-productive. They arouse anger and misunderstanding here and could lead to a further escalation of violence in Turkey,'' the ARD television commentator said. In Strasbourg, Leni Fischer, the President of the European Council Parliamentary Assembly, called on Turkey to ``respect the European Convention on Human Rights, the rules of the Council of Europe concerning prisons and to take into account the demands made by the prisoners..'' Fischer, who is German, said consultations were underway to send a delegation of parliamentarians to Turkey to discuss the issue with authorities there. In Turkey's traditional foe Greece, officials slammed Turkey's human rights record over the strikers' deaths and appealed to the European Union to intervene. German commentators and opposition politicians urged Bonn and other Western governments not to turn a blind eye to ``abuses'' by a NATO ally that is lobbying hard to join the European Union. ``If several hundred prisoners in a NATO country risk their lives to protest against the methods of the legal system there, their Western partners cannot simply look away,'' the respected Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper commented. Germany's opposition Social Democrats (SPD) expressed solidarity with the hunger strikers a day after Turkish protesters occupied the party's Frankfurt headquarters for five hours before being ousted by police. ``The prisoners' central demand is something that must be adhered to by all civilised people and states, prisons must be run without human rights violations,'' Rudolf Bindig, the SPD human rights spokesman in the German parliament said. 13:11 07-25-96 --- from list marxism-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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