ESP prisoners launch protest against deportation and isolation

Prisoners affiliated with the ESP and the SGDF have launched a protest, demanding to be transferred to prisons in the Istanbul region.

On 21 January, following an operation targeting members of the Socialist Party of the Oppressed (ESP), the Socialist Youth Associations Federation (SGDF), and the Socialist Women’s Assembly (SKM), 34 people were arrested and transferred to Marmara (Silivri) Prison.

The political prisoners were later transferred to seven different prisons around the country.

The Oppressed Lawyers Bureau (EHB), which met with the prisoners, said that they were subjected to forced strip searches and held in cells without ventilation.

EHB reported that the prisoners launched a slogan-chanting protest against being held in single-person cells with no ventilation in so-called 'well-type' prisons, as well as against their transfer to prisons far from the city where their trial is ongoing.

The prisoners voiced their demands and objections through slogans such as ‘Deportation will not break us,’ ‘Our right to ventilation cannot be denied,’ ‘Revolutionary prisoners will not surrender,’ ‘Isolation is torture, stop the torture,’ and ‘Our right to books and publications cannot be restricted.’

The families of the prisoners said that they would hold a press conference tomorrow, Wednesday 19,  at the Istanbul branch of the Human Rights Association (IHD) to condemn the attacks and raise the prisoners' demands.