Woman prisoner Tokmak to go into surgery a second time

2015-06-04 10:51:14

ISTANBUL (DİHA) – The Kurdish woman prisoner Fatma Tokmak, who has been denied medical treatment for her severe health problems, emerged from surgery alive yesterday, but is currently under observation pending open-heart surgery within the next few weeks.

Severely ill Kurdish prisoner Fatma Tokmak finally received permission from prison officials in Istanbul yesterday to receive heart surgery for her life-threatening heart calcification. Doctors are currently keeping Tokmak under observation. Her son Azad says that her condition is good, but the family does not know when she will be discharged. Doctors say she may need open-heart surgery within the next few weeks.

Women's groups, led by the Congress of Free Women (KJA), are planning a demonstration for Tokmak and all other sick prisoners being tortured through denial of medical treatment. The demonstration will take place in front of the Bakırköy Closed Women's Prison in Istanbul at 12:00 p.m today.

Who is Fatma Tokmak?

The Turkish state has tormented Kurdish woman Fatma Tokmak since 1996, when she was arrested in a house raid of a house she was visiting one night, in a period when the Kurdish region was under emergency military rule. Tokmak and her son Azad, then two and a half, were held in prison for 15 days. Police tortured Azad to make Tokmak talk. After torture, Tokmak signed a statement of confession written in Turkish. She was illiterate and spoke no Turkish. Tokmak developed heart problems during this time from the effects of stress and torture.

When she was released after nine years in prison, Tokmak refused her lawyers' advice that she flee the country, certain that she would be released given that she had committed no crime. Instead, she was arrested again. Since that time, prison officials have repeatedly denied Tokmak medical treatment for her heart problems. They "lost" a medical report from doctors urging that Tokmak be released for treatment for an entire year. She has now developed calcification in four of her cardiac valves. In a statement recently, she asked that she be released from prison, if only so that she could die alongside her family and not in jail.

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