MAZLUMDER: "Roboski Report Must Be Contested"

* Illustration: İbrahim Özdabak.

MAZLUMDER Association Chair Ahmet Faruk Ünsal and Özgür-Der AssociationDiyarbakır Chief Representative Serdar Bülent Yılmaz criticized the parliamentary report on Roboski Massacre which concluded that the Turkish military's air strike was not on purpose.

On March 6, a parliamentary commission in charge of investigating Uludere incident - a Turkish military air strike that killed 34 civilians in December 2011 - ratified its draft report without the approval vote of commission members from opposition parties.  

While a prosecutor's office issued a confidentiality order on the investigation of Uludere incident, the investigation has yet to yield any concrete results.

“A massacre depersonified”

In a statement, MAZLUMDER Assiciation Chair Ünsal said that the parliamentary commission in a way 'depersonified' the massacre by pointing out no actual culprits after working on the issue for 15 months.

"The [Turkish] state's approach not to decommission or prosecute any person or institution responsible for the air strikes, as well as its ordering Uludere villagers to pay fines [for smuggling] and efforts to silence those who want to raise their voices with fear of force and prosecution is exceptional for this commission. The parliament's human rights commission must act upon an approach according to its mission while ratifying the sub-commission report on Uludere."

“Reconciliation must start from Roboski"

Özgür-Der Association Diyarbakır Chief Representative Serdar Bülent Yılmaz claimed that the report aimed for the most part to exculpate the Turkish state.

"In the days that we are discussing the end of armed clashes between Turkish Army and PKK, we would like to remind once more that a true reconciliation must happen through Roboski. In a peace environment, a report that has been anticipated to enhance to process actually contains lots of controversial findings. The report concludes that no evidence proves the Uludere incident on purpose. This is, in a way, obscuring the reality." (AS/BM)