Hunger Strike In Turkey

[Jonupstny@xxxxxxx]

      ISTANBUL, July 24 (Reuter) - Justice Minister Sevket Kazan on Wednesday
said he would not close a notorious prison in central Turkey, rejecting one
of the demands in a two-month hunger strike that has already claimed three
lives.

    ``Eskisehir is not a prison to be closed. This is a prison well above
western standards,'' Kazan was quoted by state-run Anatolian news agency as
saying at Istanbul airport ahead of talks on the hunger strike.

    Imprisoned members and alleged members of militant left-wing groups have
been on a hunger strike since May in protest at prison conditions and the
dispersal of inmates among various prisons. A third protester died earlier on
Wednesday and at least six others are said to be in a coma and near death.

    The Ekishehir prison in Central Anatolia, known in some circles as The
Coffin, was closed briefly in 1992 under pressure from social democrats then
in power. It later reopened.

    Kazan has blamed the deaths on leftist militant ``ringleaders,'' who he
said forced the prisoners to continue the hunger strike despite the
cancellation of new prison regulations that had sparked off the protest.

    The protest and mounting death toll has presented Turkey's new
Islamist-led government with its first domestic challenge.

09:03 07-24-96


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