France criticizes Turkish Prison Policy

[Jonupstny@xxxxxxx]

      PARIS, July 23 (Reuter) - France criticised conditions at Turkish
prisons on Tuesday, urging the government to take measures to end a two-month
hunger strike by inmates.

    Foreign ministry spokesman Jacques Rummelhardt told a regular briefing
``Improving prison conditions in Turkey is one of the steps necessary for an
improvement in human rights in general, which we are particularly keen on.''

    Rummelhardt noted the Turkish interior minister's recent cancellation of
restrictive measures taken by his predecessor.

    ``We hope that this encouraging gesture will be followed by measures of
appeasement to find a way out of the hunger strike,'' he said.

    The spokesman made his remarks the day after some 40 demonstrators
protesting at prison conditions threw stones and paint at the Turkish embassy
in Paris, breaking a few windows before police arrested 10 of them.

    The hunger strike is becoming the first big domestic crisis facing the
month-old Islamist-conservative government of Prime Minister Necmettin
Erbakan.

    More than 300 prisoners from different illegal left-wing groups have been
on hunger strike at 33 jails since May.

    The prisoners are protesting at the dispersal of leftist inmates to
prisons throughout the country and also demand the transfer of prisoners from
a jail in western Turkey, where they say inmates are maltreated.

07:34 07-23-96


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