THE lawyer of a Kurdish woman who was tortured and attacked by dogs during an interrogation by the Turkish state last Friday was hauled in for questioning after publishing photographs showing her sickening injuries.
Sevil Rojbin Cetin’s Diyarbakir home was raided by security services when they smashed the door down with a sledgehammer setting two dogs onto her in a brutal three-and-a-half-hour interrogation.
Hundreds of anti-terror police surrounded the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) executive member’s apartment block while those inside the building blindfolded her, stripped her and subjected her to sexual abuse.
Ms Cetin was denied access to a lawyer during her interrogation and was tortured more severely the more she resisted.
At one stage she said police held a gun to her head, threatening to shoot her if she refused to co-operate.
Photographs showed severe injuries on her legs and bruises on her face as a result of the attack during which she was mauled by police dogs.
Ms Cetin is also a leading member of the Tevgera Jinen Azad – Free Women’s Movement, one of the women’s organisations targeted in recent operations by the Turkish state, with scores taken into custody.
HDP MP Leyla Guven said that Kurdish women are coming under attack in Kobane, Afrin, Sulaymaniyah and Turkey because the state is “afraid of us” because of our struggle for the freedom of our people.
“We will never bow to your persecution,” she said defiantly.
HDP vice-chair Danis Meral Bestas demanded an immediate statement from the government and legal action against the police officers involved.
Kurdish women have been increasingly targeted by the state including in a drone attack which killed three women in Kobane in Rojava last week.
HDP launched its Women’s Struggle Everywhere at the beginning of June to defend the right of women to participate in political life.
