Serbia: Political activist on hunger strike
Ecevit Piroğlu is a Turkish national and a member of the Kurdish ethnic minority. He is a political activist and one of the founders of the Socialist Democratic Party.
Ecevit Piroğlu was arrested at the Belgrade International Airport by the Serbian authorities in June 2021 based on an Interpol arrest warrant issued by the Turkish authorities on the grounds of criminal proceedings initiated against him in Türkiye for allegedly belonging to a “terrorist organization”. During the extradition proceedings, Ecevit Piroğlu was detained in the Country Prison in Belgrade for one year, until June 2022. Subsequently, Ecevit Piroğlu was transferred to the immigration detention centre for foreigners, designed for irregular migrants, where he remains until today.
Additionally, Ecevit Piroğlu’s request for asylum in Serbia was rejected in August 2022 without any significant deliberation, including after his appeal to the Asylum Commission. Instead of allowing Ecevit Piroğlu to leave Serbia following this rejection, as he wanted to do, the Ministry of Interior ordered his rearrest in January 2024 and placed him again in immigration detention, this time arguing that Ecevit Piroğlu was in Serbia illegally, a claim that his lawyers are challenging.
Faced with the prospect of indefinite detention in Serbia, Ecevit Piroğlu started a hunger strike on 12 February in protest of his continued detention. As of 9 May, he only weighs 50 kg, his health is rapidly deteriorating, and he is feeling increasingly weaker. Ecevit Piroğlu’s family were recently able to visit him in the detention centre and expressed extreme concerns about his health.
There are well-founded concerns that Ecevit Piroğlu could continue to be held in immigration detention indefinitely and without access to an effective remedy. His appeals against the detention have not been addressed by the authorities, and his detention order has already been extended once. The maximum period Ecevit Piroğlu could legally be held in immigration detention is until 9 July 2024, but Serbian authorities have failed to comply with such legal restrictions in the past.
Even though Türkiye’s extradition order was rejected by a Serbian court, there is still a risk that Ecevit Piroğlu could be deported to Türkiye or a third country (which could then send him to Türkiye) through an immigration procedure, in violation of the Serbia’s obligations under international law not to return an individual to a country where they may be at risk of serious human rights violations. There have been dangerous precedents of Serbia extraditing foreign nationals in the context of bilateral cooperation agreements and in violation of interim measures issued by UN Committee against Torture. Given the prevailing circumstances in Türkiye and the particular risk for members of Kurdish minority and political activists, Ecevit Piroğlu would be at a real risk of serious human rights violations, including arbitrary detention, unfair trial and torture and other ill-treatment.