The Justice for Roboski Initiative made a statement regarding the 109th month of the massacre in which 34 people, 19 of them children, were killed as a result of a bombardment by Turkish warplanes in the Roboski village of Uludere district, Şırnak province.

'NOT THE KILLERS BUT THE FAMILIES WERE PUNISHED'

Speaking at the press conference at the Human Rights Association (IHD) Ankara Branch, a member of the initiative, Tanju Gündüzalp said, “Since the massacre, families have faced hindrance, legal obstructions and a strong policy of impunity in every step taken in the name of justice. Nobody was prosecuted, nobody was punished.”

Reminding that lawsuits were filed against families who demanded justice, Gündüzalp continued: “Family members were put in prisons, a de facto situation has been created in which seeking rights was punished. And by reintroducing in the Roboski massacre the non-confrontation and non-punishment system that the state has already carried out for more than a century, the Turkish state has actually shown us that nothing within the system has changed and will not change.”

Gündüzalp said; "Who can claim that there is no war in a place where the demand for peace is punished? We, as those who condemn massacres, murders, unidentified killings and demand justice, will defend peace to the end.”

'OUR DUTY TO FIGHT FOR JUSTICE'

Emphasizing their determination to ensure justice in the Roboski massacre case, Gündüzalp said: "If Roboski is resolved, light will also be shed on many cases that have been left in the dark. Cases rewarded with impunity will be revealed in the dark corridors of Ankara. Justice will be ensured for 17 thousand people who disappeared during the notorious 1990’s. The purpose of the longest struggle of the Saturday Mothers in these lands is to expose unidentified murders, to know what happened to their relatives and to ensure justice. It is our duty to fight for whatever is human, whatever is fair, even where these demands are prohibited.”