ANKARA - In a fresh test of Turkeyâs human rights record and its bid to join the EU, a state prosecutor has filed charges against five journalists for comments they made on a conference about World War One massacres of Armenians.
How is that EU membership thing working out, anyway? | The five respected newspaper columnists face between six months and 10 years in jail if found guilty of the charges of âtrying to influence the judicial processâ and âinsulting state judicial organsâ, Turkish media reported on Saturday.
Four of the five columnists are being charged under the controversial Article 301 of Turkeyâs penal code -- the same used against the countryâs most famous novelist, Orhan Pamuk, whose trial begins on Dec. 16, and many other journalists. The article makes it a crime to insult state institutions or âTurkishnessâ.
I don't see why the EU socialists would object to that, they'd all like to be able to use the same kind of law against their opponents ... | The trial of the columnists is scheduled to start on Feb. 7, 2006. Four of them work for the liberal Radikal newspaper and the fifth for the centrist Milliyet daily.
The journalists had all criticised efforts by prosecutors and nationalist lawyers to ban a September academic conference at two universities in Istanbul dedicated to the massacre of Armenians by Ottoman Turkish forces 90 years ago. Although a court blocked the conference at the prosecutorsâ request -- much to the embarrassment of Turkeyâs pro-EU government -- organisers circumvented the ban at the last minute by moving the venue to a third university in Istanbul.
In their columns, the five journalists had branded the court ruling an attack on academic freedom and a travesty of justice.
Busted for telling the truth? That's novel. |
|