The F-type prison crisis and associated hunger strikes imposed considerable strain on the human rights community. Government authorities relentlessly persecuted TIHV, Human Rights Association (HRA), and Turkish Medical Association members who were stretching their resources to the limit in order to document abuses, ensure supplies of vitamins and clothing to F-type inmates, and provide support to the relatives of sick, dead, and dying prisoners. Five HRA branches were shut down by local governors because of their work on F-type prisons. HRA members were repeatedly beaten and detained when they tried to make public press statements.
The Justice Ministry announced that providing information about the hunger strikes was “supporting terrorism.” Accordingly, Ankara HRA branch president Lutfi Demirkapž and eleven others were charged in March under the Anti-Terror Law for their defense of human rights and face possible seven and a half year prison sentences. Their trial at Ankara SSC was under way as of this writing. In October, Yeni Safak (New Dawn) published an April 1998 memorandum from the military’s Office of the Chief of General Staff, outlining a military plan to discredit the HRA with false information linking it to the PKK. The military did not deny the April 1998 memorandum’s authenticity but claimed it was never implemented. However, an attempt on HRA president Akžn Birdal’s life in May 1998 was provoked by the type of groundless accusations contemplated in the memorandum. Birdal barely survived the attack, which left him disabled. THE ROLE OF THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY
