RONÎDA HACÎ

Hasakah- On March 24, 1993, the fire broke in HAsakah prison killed 61 prisoners, including Kurdish young people, and injured about 100 prisoners. Mehdiya Hac Mihemed, mother of nine, lost her husband in the fire. She demands the reinvestigation of the fire.

‘The Baathist government used to arrest young people for various reasons’

 Emphasizing that the Baathist government oppressed Kurdish young people for various reasons in the 1990s, Mehdiya Hac Mihemed said, “My husband, Mihemed, did not accept oppression. He was arrested even though he told them that he was not in the business of selling cigarettes. One of his friends was also accused of selling cigarettes. They hanged him. The Baathist government used to arrest young people for various reasons.”

‘I felt that something would happen’

Mehdiya Hac Mihemed accuses the Baathist regime of deliberately starting the fire. “On March 23, I visited my husband in the prison. He told me that white powder had been sprinkled on the floor of the prison. I told him, ‘What they sprinkled on the floor maybe is the one used in Amouda Cinema’. He also told me that all prisoners had had their hair and beard shaved. I felt that something would happen. When the fire broke out in the prison, a wedding ceremony was being held near the prison. According to the eyewitnesses, the regime soldiers attending the wedding ordered the volume of music to be turned up and there was no water in the fire truck that arrived to extinguish the fire in the prison. We went to the prison when we heard about the fire. Thousands of the regime soldiers attacked people gathering around the prison. Then, I was told that my husband had died in the fire.”

‘Why were so many young Kurds burned alive in the prison?’

Mehdiya Hac Mihemed believes that the fire was deliberately started in the prison. “The Kurdish people have been subjected to many genocidal attacks such as the Halabja massacre and the fire that broke out in Amouda Cinema. Why were so many young Kurds burned alive in the prison? Because the Baathist regime deliberately started the fire to kill Kurds. Today, the occupying Turkish state holds politicians, intellectuals and freedom fighters in prison according to its own interests, not to raise the voice of freedom against fascism. The fire that started in Hasakah prison shows the hatred against the struggle of the Kurdish people.”

Mehdiya Hac Mihemed demands the reinvestigation of the fire in Hasakah prison. “If the fire is reinvestigated, the truth will be revealed. Although 31 years have passed, we have not forgotten it. The international community ignored this fire, just as they ignored the Halabja Massacre, the fire in Amûdê Cinema and the massacres of the Turkish state. We will keep struggling against all kinds of oppression imposed on the Kurds.”