hunger strike

Trans female inmate Buse’s  “death fast” for her access to the right to health!

Trans inmate Buse started a “death fast” with the demand to have her gender transition surgery. Derya Özata of KADAV (Women’s Solidarity Foundation)  lists Buse’s demands. Buse has been in prison for 23 years and says “I don’t want to live with this body anymore. It’s not certain how long I will live or whether I will get out of prison”.

Source: “Trans female inmate Buse’s  “death fast” for her access to the right to health!” (“Trans kadın mahpus Buse, sağlık hakkına erişim için “ölüm orucunda”!) , Yıldız Tar, kaosgl.org, June 28, 2018, http://kaosgl.org/sayfa.php?id=26140.

Buse is one of the trans female inmates at Tekirdağ F Type Prison, for Men she has announced that she has started her “death fast” on June 5, through her lawyers.

Buse says that she has taken this decision due to the fact that her gender transition surgery has not been carried out. She is staying with Diren Coşkun, whose access to the right to health had been denied over the last months. Buse demands that her gender transition surgery is carried out immediately.

Derya Özata of KADAV has been following the violations against Diren Coşkun and Buse in prison and has explained what Buse has been going through, and what she demands to KaosGL.org.

23 years in prison

According to the information Özata gives, Buse was imprisoned at the age of 22. She is now 45 years old. She has been given a life sentence. She will be in prison for 20 more years. She had been in kept in isolation for many years, until Diren Coşkun was sent to Tekirdağ F Type Prison for Men.

The hospital sent a report, but…

Özata says she has been a penpal for Buse and tells [us] the recent developments in the process:

“Buse has been writing petitions to get a gender transition surgery for a long while. She has been struggling to have her surgery. We have written petitions together too. Lawyer Eren Keskin has been following the process too. Finally, Buse has written in a letter that the hospital has given her a report that ‘the gender transition surgery was imperative for her psychological well-being’ “. After this, another petition was written to the Ministry of Justice. However, Buse says that the ministry wrote to back to the prison saying ‘the surgery is imperative but not urgent’. Therefore Buse has started a death fast as of June 5, demanding her transfer to another prison and her gender transition surgery.”

(more…)

Foreign LGBTI inmates are on hunger strike in Turkey

Brazilian and Azerbaijani trans women were separated from LGBTI inmates from Turkey in Maltepe Prison and transferred to a different section. The women say they have been deprived of their friends’ financial and psychological help and have started a hunger strike for being kept in isolation.

Source: Ayça Söylemez, “Trans Kadın Mahpuslara Tecrit İçinde Tecrit”, (“Isolation within Isolation for Trans Women Inmates”), July 6, 2015, http://bianet.org/bianet/lgbti/165825-trans-kadin-mahpuslara-tecrit-icinde-tecrit

Non-Turkish citizen trans women at Maltepe Prison were taken to a different section in the same prison. Five of the 21 LGBTI inmates, four Brazilian, one Azerbaijani citizen, have started a hunger strike on the grounds that they were separated from their friends and “are living in isolation within isolation”.

On June 8, LGBTI inmates were taken from Maltepe C Type No 1 Prison to L Type No 3 Closed Prison, to ward B-9. The inmates have written that their Turkish friends had been helping them, and with this transfer they were left on their own, that they have no financial income and that their psychological state has deteriorated.

Among the trans women transferred to another section, Brazilian citizen Rafael Q. Alves de Sousa has told in her letter dated June 9, that they have been staying together with LGBTI inmates for the last four years and now were victimized.

Sousa, writing that the Turkish [trans inmates] have been helping them both financially and spiritually, told that the hunger strike will continue until they are taken back to their friends.

trbuyuk“I don’t even have money to buy water”

Azerbaijani trans woman inmate, who does not wish her name to be disclosed, has told Civil Society in the Penal System Foundation (CİSST) her experience and has written the following in her letter dated June 17:

“I’m in solitary here, I’m sentenced to 30 years 6 months. My sentence is too long, I can’t stay here on my own. I’m severely victimized, I don’t have a dime. When we were in the same ward, my friends would cover all my needs, now I’m psychologically traumatized. I’m in a very small space here.”

“They should take me back to Prison No.1. I wrote to the Ministry of Justice but there were no replies, I’m in an awful state. I’ve been on hunger strike since June 8. It’s very bad here, they are treating me very bad, they make fun of me, it is not suitable for me at all. I used to eat everything but now I don’t even have money for water. I drink from the tap.”

The inmate, who has tried to commit suicide when her demands were not fulfilled, wrote that her friends in her former ward understood her well but now she is alone.

“Our world got even smaller”

This is what the Turkish trans female inmate wrote to CİSST:

“We used to be 21 inmates, we are down to 16. We already lived in complete isolation on the grounds of security. We built a world of our own, 21 one of us, fighting and making truce. Now our world got even smaller. Please tell the Ministry, we are only a handful and alone, they shouldn’t separate us and make us lonelier. They should give our friends back to us.”

İHD: Isolation, psychological torture

The Human Rights Association (İHD) Prison Commission of Istanbul Branch has demanded that the isolation be ended in a July 4 press release about the trans women inmates:

“We consider this legally ungrounded situation as exile, isolation and psychological torture. The inmates have indicated in their letter that they were in dire straits economically and that they have solidarity when in the company of their friends.”

“The trans female inmate has written to us that the Azerbaijani Consulate has not taken care of the matter, that the lawyer appointed by the bar did not show up at court giving an excuse, that she gave her own defense against the prosecutor’s arguments, receiving a sentence of 30 years 6 months for murder in the first degree in spite of the incident being a case of self-defense. Their only wish is to go back being together with their Turkish friends.”

LGBTI inmates

According to the latest report of CİSST, the number of LGBTI inmates in Turkey remains unknown because the Ministry does not disclose this information, on the grounds of the “right to privacy”. Here is some information from the report on LGBTI inmates:

In Turkish prisons people are assigned to places based on the gender defined by their ID cards, which means that trans women who have not gone through a gender reassignment surgery are kept in a men’s prison, trans men in a women’s prison.

Gay inmates who are known to be or who have declared that they are gay or bisexual are assigned to the trans women’s ward in the men’s prison or remain in solitary cells. The women who are “understood” to be lesbians or bisexuals in women’s prisons may be taken to separate wards.

LGBTI inmates, especially trans women kept in men’s prisons are kept in separate wards or rooms on the grounds that they can be harmed by male inmates, they are not taken out to the workshops or courses, they cannot use the common spaces. The isolation is more severe in places where LGBTI inmates are fewer.

Hebun LGBT Diyarbakır on Hunger Strike

“As Hebun’s founders, we will not accept the shutting down of our association and we will continue to provide every opportunity we can. The right to life is the most divine right. To make ourselves heard, to make the problems of LGBT individuals visible and to create a society in which we can live together, we, as three Hebun LGBT activists want to declare that we are staging a hunger strike and we won’t stop until our demands are met.”

Source: “Hebûn LGBT Diyarbakır Açlık Grevinde” (“Hebun LGBT Diyarbakır on Hunger Strike”), Gelawej, 18 February 2015, http://www.gelawej.net/index.php/lgbtt/1465-hebun-lgbt-diyarbakir-aclik-grevinde

“As Hebun LGBT, an LGBT association founded in March 2011, we started with many reasons for making a contribution to build a more livable and secure society, such as struggling against hate speech and hate murders. Also we aspire to restrain families from murdering their children because of their sexual orientation and sexual identity. We aim at having local authorities accept that LGBT individuals are principle components of society, and they must be provided with all kinds of support. Moreover, we want to generate a solution for sex workers.

“As in every part of society, there are interrelated and converse dynamics in our living space. Unfortunately, homophobia and transphobia continue their existence intensely in all dynamics.

“In the socio-political dynamics in question with all that, and despite all these, we strived for bringing into view the problems which LGBT individuals face and say stop and we want to keep on [doing] it.

“Now we come face to face with shutting down our office in which we, as Hebun LGBT association, intend to further our efforts, reach more people and make our problems visible by also looking out for the problems of our living space.

“We filed an application for a donation from Diyarbakır Municipality, which we think is socially sensitive in many respects and we asked that the grant be paid openly. The main reason for our application for a donation is the expectation of our belief that they would stand against the “alienation” and they would support us. Moreover, while one of the reasons for our application is the material grant, the other is to understand whether the local authorities are side by side with each social component which is not entitled to survive and exposed to hate speech  socio-economically and politically. But although we are in a critical process in every respect, we did not get any feedback after two weeks. We are constantly directed to different units of the municipality or we are being told that we would be called back and therefore we think that we are being put off. As Hebun founders, we will not accept the shutting down of our association and we will continue to provide every opportunity we can.

“The right to life is the most divine right. To make ourselves heard, to make the problems of LGBT individuals visible and to create a society in which we can live together, we, as three Hebun LGBT activists want to declare that we are staging a hunger strike and we won’t stop until our demands are met.

Best regards,

Hebun LGBT Diyarbakır Association”

Update: Upon receiving an oral pledge from Diyarbakir Joint Mayor Fırat Anlı, Hebun LGBT Diyarbakır decided to temporarily halt their hunger strike on February 19, 2015. (source)