On the day
of Press Freedom Day the meeting organised by NUJ was on the issue of the journalists
in jail in Turkey.
The first
speaker Coskun Musluk, academician and columnist, attended the meeting through
Skype. He spent more than one year in
jail without any charge against him. He
highlighted the unlawfulness of the process by saying that “my release is as
unlawful as my arrest.”
The second speaker was European Federation of Journalists Turkey campaign
co-ordinator Mehmet Koksal,
who is also vice president of the Belgian journalists association. He showed the example of the newspaper,
Arrested Gazette, issued by the journalists in jail, who hold different
political views, but all stand in common against the unlawful policies of the
government. He said that all journalists
coming from different ideologies such as Kurdish movement, nationalist or
socialist were now fighting against the same enemy, AKP.
The third speaker, TUC policy officer Sean Bamford mentioned that the oppression was not only against journalists, it was against anybody, women, Kurdish, unions who want to express their opinions. He gave the example from the May Day celebration and the police brutality against it.
International Federation of Journalists president Jim Boumelha informed us
that the study of associated press in 2011 released that one third of 13.000 terrorist
convictions worldwide handed
down by Turkish state. He also touched
the role of `Muslim democracy` played by Turkish
government on the region, Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Syria
The meeting finished with solidarity messages from both the platform and
the floor.
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