A 14-year-old boy known only as Y.D. who was on his way home with a 10-year-old friend, was brutally beaten, tortured, and thrown into a swamp by police officers in a shocking incident in the Lice (Licê) district of Diyarbakır (Amed) last night.
The boy was stopped by the police with no justification, abducted, taken to a secluded place, and subjected to torture.
The police officers reportedly forced Y.D. to say that he was Turkish and then beat him, demanding that he curse the Kurds and recite the Turkish national anthem. When the boy did not comply, the officers threatened to shoot him in the head. They then gagged him and bound his hands and feet and threw him into a swamp near a small river in the district.
Y.D. was rescued by a villager who heard his cries for help and rushed him to hospital. The boy’s family said he had been beaten with gun butts and tied up before being thrown into the swamp.
The family’s lawyer Ramazan Karalp recounted the events involving Y.D. as follows:
“The police stopped him and his friend when they were walking home yesterday evening. They allowed his friend (10) to leave, but took Y.D. to an isolated spot where they assaulted him with their gun butts. Not only did they physically harm the child, but they also tried to force him to say, ‘I am a Turk, a curse upon the Kurds.’ When he refused, they instructed him to memorise the national anthem by the following day, threatening to shoot him in the head if he failed to do so. After that, they left him tied up in a rundown location near a small river in the town centre. A villager who heard the boy’s cries while tending his animals in his barn found him and rushed him to hospital.”
A medical report documenting the assault was issued to Y.D. by Lice State Hospital before he was transferred to Dicle University Faculty of Medicine, where he is currently receiving treatment. The child is in danger of losing his right eye, as there is continuous bleeding and he is unable to open it.
