followthemedia.com , Switzerland
Jan 21 2007
They’re Killing The Journalists
Michael Hedges January 22, 2007
Hrant Dink, gunned down in Istanbul, became the latest journalist
murder victim to attract world-wide media coverage. The day-time
Friday shooting on a busy `European side’ of Istanbul street, his
newspaper office in sight, became a call to outrage. Perhaps editors
could not resist the AP and AFP photos of the sheet covered body,
boots and blood visible. Instant death: instant pictures.
Hrant Dink founded the bi-lingual Agos newspaper in 1986 to tell the
story of Armenians living in Turkey. He faced threats, trials and
punishment for `offending Turkishness,’ the crime of raising the
subject of Armenian genocide nearly a century ago. He told a recent
interviewer that his head swiveled `like a pigeon’ as he walked
through the streets, always alert to possible threats.
By Saturday Turkish police arrested a primary suspect, Ogun Samast,
and three or six or eight others. A closed circuit television camera
a short distance from the crime scene snapped a photo of a young man,
fitting witness descriptions, stuffing something under his shirt,
below his belt. Perhaps it was the weapon that had fired 2 or 3 or 4
bullets at close range into the head and neck of Hrant Dink. The
young mans’ photo was shown on all national television channels and
he was identified by his distraught father. The young man is 16 or 17
years old from the northern Turkey city Trabson. When captured on a
bus a gun was in his possession. Live television showed paramilitary
police examining the gun and dropping it in an evidence bag.
Witnesses on that busy Istanbul street reported the young man said or
shouted `I have killed the Armenian’ or `I have killed the
non-Muslim.’ Police reported Sunday that Samast admitted the
shooting.
`I read on the Internet that he said ‘I am from Turkey but Turkish
blood is dirty’ and I decided to kill him … I do not regret this,’
he told interrogators, according to CNN Turk.
Media coverage in Turkey and Armenia eclipsed all else. Universally,
Turkish media expressed shock. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip
Erdogan took to television saying, `The bullets aimed at Hrant Dink
were shot into all of us."
`TV networks broadcast the clips from Istanbul street protests
against the killing of the Armenian journalists,’ said RFE/RL Yerevan
bureau chief Harry Tamrazian in an email to ftm Friday night. `But
this is just a first day and I imagine there will be protests also in
Yerevan streets, as well as in the European capitals and US cities
where there are large Armenian communities.’
Other recent high-profile murders of journalists include Anna
Politkovskaya, shot to death in Moscow last October, Walid Hassan
shot to death in Iraq in November and Roberto Marcos Garcia, shot to
death in Mexico in November. All had the misfortune of investigating
and reporting. The World Association of Newspapers (WAN) tally of
media employees killed in 2006 shows 110 deaths, nearly a 100%
increase over 2005.
Whether a teenager with a gun or a crazy with a cause, they’re
killing the journalists.
nk22012007.htm