THE UNITED STATES ACCUSED TURKEY OF LIMITING FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION
PanARMENIAN.Net
28.02.2009 00:18 GMT+04:00
/PanARMENIAN.Net/ US Department of State has criticized Turkish
government in its annual human rights report. According to the report
"Individuals could not criticize the state or government publicly
without fear of reprisal, and the government continued to restrict
expression by individuals sympathetic to some religious, political,
and Kurdish nationalist or cultural viewpoints. Active debates on
human rights and government policies continued, particularly on
issues relating to the country’s EU membership process, the role
of the military, Islam, political Islam, the question of Turks of
Kurdish and other ethnic or religious origins as "minorities," and the
history of the Turkish-Armenian conflict at the end of the Ottoman
Empire. However, persons who wrote or spoke out on such topics,
particularly on the Armenian issue, risked prosecution. The TPA
reported that serious restrictions on freedom of expression continued
despite legal reforms related to the country’s EU candidacy.
According to the Turkish government, there were no journalists held on
speech violations during the year. However, the TPA reported there were
21 journalists in jail for the content of their reporting, including
Kurdish media members and those accused of being leftist dissidents."
It is mentioned in the report "in October 2008 the Ministry of Justice
approved continuance of the case against publisher and writer Temel
Demirer under Article 301. Demirer had been charged for a statement he
made after Dink’s killing, calling for the recognition of the tragic
events of 1915 as "genocide."
The case against Atilla Tuygan for translating two books dealing with
Turkish-Armenian relations continued at year’s end. The case was
opened in May 2007 after the books’ publisher, Ragip Zarakolu, was
acquitted, and the court ruled that Tuygan should be tried instead. In
a second case, Raqip Zarakolu was convicted on June 19 and sentenced
to five months in prison for publishing The Truth Will Set Us Free,
a book describing the experience of the author’s grandmother during
the tragic events of 1915. The court postponed the imposition of
punishment, and Zarakolu and his lawyer appealed the verdict," the
official website of US Department of State reports.