‘True reconciliation must happen through Roboski’

KT News:

Human rights activists in north Kurdistan spoke out yesterday against the official parliamentary report into the Roboski massacre, arguing that it is a cover-up and that an honest accounting of the state’s killing of 34 unarmed, mostly teenage smugglers should be integral to the peace process.

Bianet quotes Mazlumder (Organization of Human Rights and Solidarity for Oppressed People ) Chair Ahmet Faruk Ünsal as condemning: “The [Turkish] state’s approach not to decommission or prosecute any person or institution responsible for the air strikes, as well as its ordering Uludere villagers to pay fines [for smuggling] and efforts to silence those who want to raise their voices with fear of force and prosecution …”

Ünsal called on the Turkish parliamentary human rights commission to contest the report into the deadly December 2011 air strikes. Furthermore, Özgür-Der Association Diyarbakır Chief Representative Serdar Bülent Yılmaz also argued that the report was mainly designed to exonerate the Turkish state.

“In the days that we are discussing the end of armed clashes between Turkish Army and PKK, we would like to remind once more that a true reconciliation must happen through Roboski”, he said. “In a peace environment, a report that has been anticipated to enhance the process actually contains lots of controversial findings. The report concludes that no evidence proves the Uludere incident (took place) on purpose. This is, in a way, obscuring the reality.”