Human Rights Association publishes "Monitoring Rights in Turkey's Prisons Report 2021"

The Human Rights Association (IHD) Central Commission for Prisons published its "Monitoring Rights in Turkey's Prisons Report 2021."

The IHD Headquarters alone received applications from 901 prisoners through letters and their families or lawyers in 2021. This adds up to thousands of applications submitted to the association's 27 branches and eight representation offices.

Most of the applications exposed the constant violation of the right to health and the prohibition of torture and degrading treatment and discrimination.

The 52-page report said that the association received applications from prisons in almost every region of the country.

The report included a list of the violations that prisoners were subjected to:

Overcrowded wards due to increase in the number of prisoners.

Delayed referrals of prisoners to the infirmary, long queues for referrals from the infirmary to tertiary health institutions or polyclinics.

The lack of health service capacity to handle intense demands for healthcare services.

Doctors are not always present in infirmaries.

Security officers do not remove handcuffs while prisoners are being examined, and doctors do not ask them to do so.

Pressures to search prisoners before being referred to health institutions and their referral to health institutions in one-cell shuttles, which especially affects asthma patients.

Delayed referrals to health institutions or not being referred at all.

Failure to release seriously ill prisoners despite being in the latest stages of their diseases.

Prisoners not really being treated but being given drugs with temporary effects.

The Forensic Medicine Institution (ATK) not giving decisions of release for ill prisoners due to political reasons.

Wards that are not heated and ventilated.

Problems in access to clean water.