Turkish soldiers are accused of subjecting a 16-year-old shepherd to torture in the Kurdish-majority province of Hakkari (Colemêrg) before detaining him. The incident unfolded when the boy brought livestock to access drinking water at a stream close to his village. Three relatives, aged between 16 and 20, were also beaten at the scene and subsequently detained by the soldiers.
On Wednesday in Brussels over 40 unions, political parties and experts gathered for an emergency press briefing concerning the continued and unabated isolation of PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan, held under total incommunicado in Turkey for 28 months. The speakers called for local and international actors to work towards securing his release and furthering a peaceful solution to the Kurdish conflict.
Turkey’s Constitutional Court postponed an assessment of the appeal case brought by jailed Kurdish politician Selahattin Demirtaş due to a member of the court being “unable to prepare” sufficiently for the hearing. The country is facing severe sanctions by European bodies over its noncompliance with European Court of Human Rights rulings on Demirtaş’s immediate release.
In the midst of ongoing mass protests in Israel against a raft of newly passed laws that the government terms a “judicial reform”, the country’s doctors staged a 24-hour strike in opposition to the legislation which limits powers held by the Israeli High Court. Meanwhile, former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert describes tensions in the country as “civil war”.
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