63rd inmate starves to death during hunger strike in Turkish prison

Abatay had been imprisoned for membership in the Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party-Front, or DHKP-C, a banned Marxist group, and was transferred to the hospital because of deteriorating health, the Human Rights Association said.

Leftist prisoners and their supporters began the fast in October 2000 to protest the government’s policy of moving prisoners from large wards housing up to 100 people to one- or three-inmate cells.

Prisoners say that small cells leave them isolated and vulnerable to abuse by guards. The government says that the large wards were unruly.
The DHKP-C, which is leading the strike, has claimed responsibility for a number of assassinations and bombings since the 1970s.