RT’s William Whiteman witnessed shocking scenes of destruction in the southeastern Turkish town, and collected horrifying accounts of an alleged massacre of Kurdish civilians there.
Witnesses who survived the offensive by the Turkish military provided Whiteman with terrifying details on what had happened in the now-devastated area, and showed the location of the alleged mass killing.
The footage shot by RT journalists in Cizre has been submitted to Human Rights Watch (HRW), the international and Middle East branches of Medics Without Borders (MSF), the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), and Amnesty International.
RT asked if the international organizations were planning to investigate the claims of Turkish forces’ atrocities against civilians, and if any statements would be made. None of them have responded in detail, citing a variety of reasons.
Amnesty International emailed saying they “will not be able to comment on this at this time and must decline your offer.”HRW said their Turkish researchers “are still looking into the allegations, but are not available to comment at present.”
The ICRC said they do not have a Turkish office, thus cannot investigate the situation in its southeast. The UN Human Rights Commissioner’s office in Geneva only offered a press-release dated February 1, while MSF have not replied as of this publication.
“We want to attract widespread public attention and call for an independent international investigation led by UNHRC into the alleged mass killing of Kurds in south-eastern Turkey,” the petition launched by RT on the Change.org platform says.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov called for an investigation into reports of massive human rights abuse in south-eastern Turkey against Kurdish nationals.
“Any reports, particularly those documented ones, about rude and large scale human rights abuse and violations of international humanitarian law must be investigated. There are special international procedures for that,” Lavrov said. Read full on RT
