Amnesty Urges Turkey to Free Reporters, Activists in Virus Plan

(Bloomberg) -- Amnesty International urged Turkey to include journalists and human-rights defenders in its proposed legislation to free some prisoners at risk of contracting the coronavirus in jails.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government is considering an amnesty for tens of thousands of inmates but hasn’t yet submitted a draft law to parliament. The pandemic had killed 131 people in Turkey as of Sunday, and sickened more than 9,000.

The virus outbreak will exacerbate already unsanitary facilities that pose a serious health threat to Turkey’s prison population of nearly 300,000, as well as to tens of thousands of jail staff, the group said in a statement on Monday as it welcomed the government proposal.

“However, we remain concerned that journalists, human rights defenders and others imprisoned for simply exercising their rights, and others who should be released, will remain behind bars in the package of measures as currently conceived by the government,” it said.

Turkey has detained 47 reporters, according to a December study by the Committee to Protect Journalists, making it the second-biggest jailer of journalists worldwide, after China.

Some of the journalists held are among the tens of thousands of people Turkey detained for supporting the group Erdogan blames for orchestrating a failed 2016 coup.

Authorities have considerably restricted people’s movement and banned large gatherings to try to contain the spread of the virus. Turkey has stopped short of declaring a lockdown to avoid bringing the economy to a standstill.

©2020 Bloomberg L.P.