Reuters/AFP
Akhisar, Turkey
Families of 301 miners killed in Turkey’s worst industrial disaster disrupted the start of a trial yesterday, shouting out demands that charged mining executives be brought to the dock.
The judge initially called in police, some in riot gear, to try and quell the unrest.
He then adjourned the hearing and called for eight defendants being held on remand to be brought in tomorrow.
The eight former managers, who are in detention in Izmir, had been seen on a large screen in the court sitting on benches surrounded by police at their prison.
“Bring the killers here and have them look at us in the eye,” shouted one of the relatives inside the courtroom.
“My brother died at Soma and I lost 301 brothers at that mine,” said Murat Aybak, himself a former miner. “I want all those who are responsible, all those who gave the orders for them to work like that to be punished for their mistakes.”
An underground fire sent deadly carbon monoxide coursing through the mine in Soma, western Turkey, last May.
Forty-five company officials, including the chief executive, face charges ranging from “killing with probable intent” to “criminally negligent manslaughter”.
After the disaster, mine operator Soma Holding said there had been no negligence and the government insisted that existing mining safety regulations were sound.
Hundreds of relatives and protesters marched through the town of Akhisar where the trial was being held, about 40km from Soma, demanding harsh sentences earlier yesterday.
Some wore mining helmets painted black and carrying the names of the deceased miners. Women collapsed in tears, touching the names listed on another banner.
Many were enraged by the authorities’ decision not to bring the defendants to the hearing.
“Not an accident but murder,” read one banner.
Hundreds of relatives of the victims and lawyers crammed into the courthouse, a building usually used as a cultural centre turned into a court to accommodate the scale of the trial.
About a dozen police entered the courtroom as the judge called a break until order was restored, but there were no clashes with protesters.
Pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party leader Selahattin Demirtas, among politicians and union members observing the case, told reporters that politicians should be tried.
“There is not a single politician sitting in the defendants seats. Justice can never be fully delivered unless the court takes into account the responsibility of politicians,” he said.
The disaster triggered protests last year with critics saying the government was too close to industry bosses and insensitive in its response to the tragedy.
The latest protests come before a June 7 national election.
The New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) group said the trial did not address the responsibility of state agents who it said failed in their duty to protect miners’ lives.
“The government’s role in the Soma disaster needs to be investigated and corrected if Turkey is going to be able to reverse its terrible record of preventable mine accidents,” HRW senior Turkey researcher Emma Sinclair-Webb said in a statement.
The accident on May 13, 2014 raised new concerns about Turkey’s dire industrial safety record and exposed the lacklustre reaction of the government led by Recep Tayyip Erdogan, now president but then premier.
Erdogan had notoriously appeared to play down the disaster, saying that “accidents are in the nature of the business” and comparing it to accidents in Industrial Revolution-era Britain.
The tragedy sparked protests that rattled the government a year after the mass anti-government rallies in Istanbul and elsewhere, with an adviser to Erdogan raising tensions by kicking a protester in Soma in an incident caught on camera.
The disaster happened when one of the pits of the Soma mine became engulfed by flames and carbon monoxide gas, trapping a team of some 800 miners.
A report after the disaster found a long list of faults at the mine, including a lack of carbon monoxide detectors, gas masks in poor condition and bad ventilation.
Lawyers for the families of the victims say that the owners of the Soma mine had sought over-exploitation for the sake of profit, resulting in “working conditions worthy of slavery”.
Representatives of the victims have also argued that the scope of the trial should be even wider, accusing the government of repeatedly turning a blind eye to shortcomings at the mine.
A month after the disaster, the government pushed through parliament a law aimed at improving Turkey’s standards of labour safety.
But Turkey was hit by a new mining disaster in October 2014 when 18 miners were killed after floodwaters engulfed their mine in the southern region of Karaman.
