Netherlands: "Suicide" of deportee
01 June 2000
In April 1999 Suleyman Aksoy, a Kurdish conscientious objector, was deported from the Netherlands. Back in Turkey, he was arrested and forced to serve in the army; within three months he was dead. Turkish officials have claimed that he committed suicide. The Dutch launched an investigation by the Ministry of Justice, and the expulsion of Kurdish conscientious objectors was suspended until it reported. The investigation was carried out by staff at the Dutch Embassy in Ankara, who claimed to have spoken with Turkish human rights organisations, which accepted that Aksoy had committed suicide. Now, Job Cohen, State Secretary of Justice, has issued a statement confirming that the inquiry concluded that Aksoy had committed suicide. As a result, Kurdish conscientious objectors can once again be expelled.
On 23 June representatives of the IHD and TIHV, Turkish human rights organisations, and Suleyman Aksoy's father participated in a press conference in The Hague. Both organisations said that Dutch Embassy staff visited them briefly and that they had expressed their concerns that Askoy did not commit suicide. His case was similar to those of 40 other Kurdish conscientious objectors who died in the army. Suleyman's father told that media that the Turkish authorities did not perform an autopsy on his son. He was prevented from seeing him, but at the funeral he had a opportunity to look at the face of his son, which was battered. It looked as though he had been tortured, he claimed.
Parliament might have been misled by the Dutch embassy in Turkey. But when, Femke Halsema (GroenLinks) asked for the report, she was told it was still secret.
Buro Jansen Janssen