Rachel Bird, Sarah Parker and Angela Sibley visited Diyarbakir (Amed) in the Kurdish area of Turkey in March to see the Newroz celebrations. Below they report on the human rights situation in the area. The Newroz spring fire festival, which the Kurdish population has been able celebrate legally for the last six years, took place on Monday March an apparently relaxed and joyful atmosphere, with several well known singers appearing. The crowd was large, numbering some hundreds of thousands.
Many of the Kurds, especially women and children, wore the traditional colours: red, yellow and green.
We saw flags belonging to KONGRA-GEL and the People's Defence Forces (the Kurdish guerrillas, and posters of Abdullah Ocalan, indicating continued popular support for the Kurdish liberation movement.
The police and army presence was not particularly high or obtrusive, but we were told that the event was being filmed and that people displaying Kurdish colours and flags would be rounded up for interrogation later.
We met the Diyarbakir branch of the Human Rights Association and other civil society organisations, including the pro-Kurdish party DEHAP and several women's organisations.
We asked how far the organisations feel their work is still hampered by repres sion and intimidation by police and security forces. We wanted to know how far they demanded by the lacess legal changes sion process has changed the situation on the ground.
We were told that things are easier now, in that while physical torture still sometimes takes place when people are arrested, there is less of it than there used to be.
Extra-judicial killings and disappearances are now generally at a relatively low level. People regard it as a triumph to be able to celebrate Newroz legally.
But whenever we asked about the recent spate of extra-judicial killings, including the shooting of twelveyear old Ugur Kaymaz and his father, we were told that people were very worried by this. They are fearful of a return to the terrors of the past.
In so far as physical brutality by the police and security forces has been reduced, it has often been replaced by psychological torture. There is increased harassment of Kurdish and human rights
The teachers' union, Egitim Sen, recently faced closure because its constitution calls for mother tongue teaching to be introduced in schools. But the case against them failed and they think that the government will not now appeal.
School children have been threatened with getting low grades if they attended the Newroz celebrations. No public employees were allowed leave on that day, under the threat of disciplinary procedures which could led to sacking and permanent ban from employment as a public servant.
People we spoke to were angry that the Turkish media had not reflected the overwhelmingly positive atmosphere of the Newroz celebrations, including the large numbers celebrating in шашу other cities besides Diyarbakir.
Instead they had focussed on a minor incident in Mersin where some young people allegedly burned a Turkish flag, to whip up hostility to Kurdish people generally. The Turkish government seems to be reviving its plans to build the Ilisu Dam across the Tigris, to drown the city of Hasankeyf, and to forcibly remove the inhabitants of the town and other villages in the valley.