MERSİN - Stand-up count has been imposed on the prisoners held in Tarsus Women’s Prisoner and 100 women have reportedly punished to solitary confinement for not accepting the stand-up count in the prison.

 

Mersin-Tarsus Women’s Prison has remained on the agenda for torture allegations since it was opened. Women prisoners in the prison sent a letter to the branches of the Human Rights Association (İHD) in Mersin, Adana and Diyarbakır through their families. In the letter, the prisoners state that they have faced ban on visit, communication, social activities and holding in sponged rooms.

 

Solitary confinement to 100 prisoners

 

As the letter says the women have faced the stand-up count in prison for a month, it also reports that 100 women have been punished to solitary confinement. In the letter, the prisoners write that tens of wardens entered the cells all together and they took the video of the stand-up count with their cameras. The prisoners say, “We don’t have safety of life due to the stand-up count in mornings and evenings. Because, many officers and wardens enter our cells during the count and they force us to be counted as standing up.”

 

‘Practices are an attack on human dignity’

 

Lawyer Gülşen Özbek, who talked to her client in Tarsus Prison, stated that they objected to the practice by writing a petition. “The Law on Criminal Execution says, ‘Human dignity must be protected during the count’. But these practices are an attack on human dignity.”