Hon. Leo Housakos: Honourable senators, I rise today to give thanks to Mesut Kacmaz, Meral Kacmaz, Murat Acar and Candan Acar, four Turkish-Canadian victims of torture who were brave enough to share their stories with me last month here in Ottawa.

In September 2017, teachers Mesut and Meral Kacmaz, along with their two children, were illegally abducted from Pakistan and taken to Turkey, where they were arbitrarily detained and tortured. Murat Acar was a radiologist and his wife, Candan, was a teacher. They, along with their two children, were illegally abducted from Bahrain and sent to Turkey in October 2016, where they, too, were arbitrarily detained and tortured. These two families sought refuge in Canada after escaping persecution in Turkey, and are now proud to call Canada home.

When we met last month, we spoke about the targeted sanctions submission they filed with Global Affairs, asking the Government of Canada to implement targeted sanctions against the 12 Turkish officials they have identified as responsible for the gross violations of human rights committed against them and against their friend Gökhan Açıkkollu, who was tortured to death in Turkish prison around the same time.

Colleagues, the human rights situation in Turkey is appalling. What happened to these Canadians are examples of a serious and worrying escalation of human rights abuses in Turkey. Since 2016, the Turkish government has detained over 300,000 people, including thousands of prosecutors and judges, and shut down more than 2,000 institutions and 131 media outlets. Turkey detained so many journalists that, for a time, they were the worst jailer of journalists in the world.

There is evidence that detainees are tortured and raped, and hundreds have died in prison. United Nations mechanisms, including the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention and the UN Human Rights Committee, have found repeatedly that Turkish officials are responsible for serious human rights violations in this context.

Impunity is pervasive in Turkey, and as Turkish law enforcement is demonstrably unwilling to penalize those responsible, it is up to the international community, including Canada, to hold to account those officials that are responsible for gross human rights violations — especially, colleagues, now that we have Canadian victims of the Erdoğan regime. We owe it to them to do what we can to help them seek justice for the crimes committed against them.

Thank you.

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