Ankara - A Turkish prisoner on hunger strike has died after setting himself on fire as part of a protest against prison reforms in which 35 people have now died, a human rights group said yesterday.
A spokeswoman for Turkey's Human Rights Association said Ibrahim Erler, an inmate at Tekerdag prison in north-west Turkey, had set himself alight on Monday in a protest that followed clashes between police and supporters of the hunger strikers in Istanbul on Saturday. The hunger strikes began in prisons late last year in protest at the introduction of new cell-based jails to replace prisons based on large dormitory wards. Many prisoners and their families strongly oppose the new jails, saying they make inmates more vulnerable to abuse by prison wardens.
Turkish police clashed with protesters outside an Istanbul house occupied by leftist hunger strikers last Saturday after authorities tried to break up a crowd gathered around the body of a woman hunger striker who died late last week.