Recent interviews with ex-members and their testimonies indicate that PKK members have been exploited by the terrorist organization through various inhumane methods, including sexual assault and newborn trafficking.
According to an Interior Ministry report released yesterday, the latest scrutiny of numerous testimonies and interviews of former PKK terrorists portrays a detailed picture of the terrorist organization's exploitation of children. The report states that the testimonies of these ex-members mostly illuminate the period following the mid-1990s which are full of "numerous undeniable human sufferings stemming from random rapes and executions of so called traitors who are circulating such stories."
According to these testimonies, children (both girls and boys) between the ages of 9 to 14 are forced into sexual intercourse with adult members of the terrorist organization, and resistance to such demands results in harsh punishment. Especially women who refuse sexual intercourse demands are accused for being agents and traitors. However, at the same time, people who are accused of sexual intercourse, especially the women, are also executed by the PKK.
The terrorist organization also uses rape as a means of punishment, according to the report. Also the children of PKK terrorists are either being sold to European states, one of the income resources of the terrorist organization or being raised as future terrorists.
The PKK has also been using the human body in various ruthless ways in so called hospitals to find different ways to traffic drugs, an important source of income for the terrorist organization, by placing the drugs in the bodies of carrier terrorists.
The PKK is a hierarchical organization reflecting strictly closed group characteristic which suppresses these atrocities by executing victims or forcing them to commit suicide, resulting in such incidents being hushed and hidden away.
"Such incidents have been kept in secret and the victims of these incidents have been accused as traitors by the PKK," the report stated, adding that recently, the numbers of such testimonies have accelerated.
"After witnessing an increase in such atrocities during interviews, government law enforcement officials decided to take a general survey of the inhumane sexual abuse, assault and bloody execution by the PKK in order to reveal the dark side of the organization," the report further said.
The primary perpetrators of these calamities have mostly been high-ranking terrorists in the PKK, according to the report. Therefore these so-called high-ranking members had turned a blind eye to such stories, and their accounts of ruthlessness were a real wake-up call.
Moreover, reportedly, the PKK is currently trying to keep organizational unity among current members, since a considerable amount of newcomers have escaped and sought refuge with government agencies in hopes of starting a new life. Authorities have said that the need for human resources is at its peak within the PKK.
