In countries where human rights are under attack, lawyers as well as politicians can become primary tar gets of political repression.

Lawyers are in a position to see injustice first hand and to speak out about it with authority.

The independence of lawyers and the freedom to represent clients and to speak out for them must be a fundamental requirement of a democratic regime.Lawyers are now coming under attack in Egypt, Pakistan, Ghana and Nigeria to name but a few.

But one such country is closer to home, in terms of trading links and fellow membership of Nato and the Council of Europe: Turkey.It was to south-east Turkey that I went on behalf of the Law Society on a joint mission with Joanna Glynn of the Bar Council human rights committee to observe a trial on 13 February of seven lawyers from the Diyarbakir Human Rights Association management committee.

I had already been on several missions to the south east or Kurdish part of Turkey including, in October l993, a mission for the Law Society to report on the plight of defence lawyers who suffer threats and intimidation.On that occasion I documented unjustifiable arrests, innumerable prosecutions for 'separatism' for protesting against human rights abuses and, even worse, extra-judicial killings of lawyers rumoured to be carried out by security forces in Turkey.

Among lawyers imprisoned in Turkey since then have been Meral Danis, a woman lawyer who reported being tortured, and Sedat Aslantas, now serving three years for signing a petition against human rights abuses.What Joanna Glynn and I witnessed last week in a court room in the state security court in Diyarbakir, the capital of south-east Turkey, would be enough to chill the blood of anyone who has ever aspired to be a Michael Mansfield or a Gareth Peirce.

For me it was a shock because the people on trial were literally on trial for doing something I myself have done: they had written a human rights report about attacks by security forces on unarmed crowds celebrating the Kurdish new year in l992, resulting in over 100 deaths and many injuries.For writing this report, the seven defendants were charged with 'separatism' and 'membership of an armed gang', and the banning of the Human Rights Association is now sought.

Four defendants - Mahmut Sakar, Abdullah Cager, Nimetullah Gundez and Melike Alp - have been in prison since 16 December and the remaining three are avoiding arrest.

Only Ms Alp (also the only woman) is not a qualified lawyer.

The prosecution is demanding that they serve 15 to 22 years imprisonment and it seems quite likely that a sentence of this length will be handed down.

The prosecution is attempting to establish that they are members of the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) because, it says, the human rights report was one sided and because of a separate charge against one of the three others not in prison, Halit Temli, the president of the Diyarbakir Human Rights Association, who is now reputed to be in Europe.The prosecution alleges that Mr Temli attended a meeting in January l994 in Diyarbakir to elect a representative for the so called 'Kurdistan assembly' (a substitute parliament), which is now said to be meeting in Brussels.

In January l994 Mr Temli was not even a member of the Diyarbakir Human Rights Association management committee.

Further, the two prosecution witnesses produced at the court hearing we attended to testify that he was present at this meeting both withdrew their testimony and stated they had been tortured.

Despite this, the charge against Mr Temli was said to implicate all the defendants.In court the judge asked questions about why the defendants had not included an account of the even ts in l992 from the security forces.

He said the court had a tape of a telephone conversation between Mahmut Sekar and someone in the Ankara Human Rights Association office about publishing the human rights report (from a phone tap).

They would investigate with a view to prosecuting this other person and presumably the Ankara office too, which is the central office of the Human Rights Association.

He remanded the defendants in custody until 14 April.We visited a senior prosecutor, who stated that the authorities 'knew' that the Human Rights Association was a front for the PKK and that they were still relying on the evidence of the prosecution witnesses despite their retractions in court.

When I said to him that the lawyers had done nothing different from that which I myself had done, ie write a report on events in l992, he said that the difference was that the defendants were 'motivated by separatism', so I was obligingly exculpated from this charge.

It was almost impossible to hold a conversation with the prosecutor (and I have done so before) without fast descending into the realms of a twilight tyranny where factual evidence counts for nothing against his apparent inability to distinguish any form of criticism from armed conflict.Events since our return from south-east Turkey have confirmed our impression that the intention is to criminalise all lawyers associated with the Human Rights Association.

Incredibly, the defence lawyer in the trial we observed, Sezgin Tanrikulu, was himself arrested on 27 February and is now being held in custody with five other members of the Human Rights Association, two of whom have reported being beaten up by the 'anti-terror police'.

The authorities have also forcibly closed down the Human Rights Association in Diyarbakir.Since l984 the PKK has been carrying out a brutal and largely unreported war with the Turkish authorities in south-east Turkey.

Many thousands of people have been killed.

The PKK itself is reported to engage in atrocities such as the killing of civilians who refuse to support it.

Official sources in this country have, in the past, evinced sympathy for Turkey while making comparisons with Northern Ireland and the difficulties posed to a democratic government by the threat from a terrorist organisation.I have known since l992 that there is no comparison whatsoever with Northern Ireland and that the human rights abuses endured by ordinary Kurdish people in south-east Turkey cannot conceivably be justified.

Over 1500 Kurdish villages have been destroyed by security forces and hundreds of thousands of people made homeless.

In the three years since I first went there the repression of anyone speaking up for peaceful and constitutional change to recognise pro-Kurdish rights has intensified.

Journalists, Kurdish politicians, human rights activists and, increasingly, lawyers are being imprisoned and sometimes killed for exercising democratic rights which we take for granted in this country.As lawyers in this country we have a particular responsibility towards the lawyers in south-east Turkey who are under such dire threat.

First, both the Law Society and the Bar Council human rights committee are working with the London based Kurdistan Human Rights Project, which has brought over 250 cases in the European Commission against the Turkish government; 12 of which have been declared admissible.

These individual cases have all been brought with the assistance of lawyers from the Human Rights Association in Turkey, some of whom are now in prison.

Twenty-two lawyers on trial separately in Diyarbakir are actually charged with a criminal offence of assisting complaints to the European Commission.Secondly, Turkey is not only a signatory to the European Convention and a member of the Council of Europe, but also an aspiring member of the EU and European Customs Union.

There should be plenty of opportunities for lawyers in this country to encourage our own political authorities to put pressure on Turkey.

The President of the Law Society has written some 15 letters to Turkish authorities in the last year to protest at the treatment of individual lawyers, and it seems to me that both politicians and lawyers should be taking up the lack of any constructive response.-- Individual UK lawyers are urged to write letters of protest about the imprisonment of lawyers in Turkey to the Minister of Justice, Mehmet Mogultay, 06659 Ankara, Turkey; fax 90 312 417 3954.