Yeni Politika Closed Down!

[kurdeng at aps.nl]

------------------------ Forwarded from : kcc at magi.com -------------------------

Yeni Politika Closed Down By Turkish Authorities

Press Release - August 16, 1995

     Yeni Politika started as a daily newspaper on April 13, 1995
under the slogan "tear down the curtain of lies" and published
126 issues without interruption.
     Since the very first issue, our newspaper has never made any
concession to the principles of objective journalism which it
considers a requirement to its commitment to peace, democracy,
and liberty, and also to its responsibility vis-a-vis our people.
However, anti-democratic forces, who are mortally afraid of the
possibility that our peoples will become aware of the truth, were
not slow to attack our newspaper using all their undemocratic
modus operandi such as confiscation, obstacles to distribution,
and censorship. Almost all of our 126 issues, except for 9, were
censored or banned from distribution.
     Soon after the last decision of the National Security
Council prescribing "increased control" over freedom of the
press, our paper was confiscated by a decision of the 4th
Istanbul Penal Court under added Article 2.2 of Law 5680.
According to the Istanbul Press Prosecutor, Yeni Politika "was a
continuation of the papers Ozgur Gundem and Ozgur Ulke which were
previously closed down".
     As this sentence for confiscation is a de facto sentence to
close down the paper, our issues to be published from now on will
be confiscated as illegal.
     Since the above-mentioned sentence leaves us no other
choice, we have to interrupt our activities as a newspaper. 
Necati Taniyan
Director of Yeni Politika


NUJ Delegation Visits Diyarbakir

Press Release - August 17, 1995

     Four days after a National Union of Journalists (NUJ)
delegation visited the Istanbul offices of Yeni Politika, the
daily Kurdish newspaper [published in the Turkish language], to
enquire into the continuing censorship and intimidation of
Kurdish newspapers and their workers, the newspaper was closed
down.
     The delegation, consisting of journalist Marie Ryan and
lawyer Sadi Khan, visited Yeni Politika on August 13 and then
flew to Diyarbakir to attend the trial of three Kurdish
journalists, two of whom worked for Yeni Politika.
     While in Diyarbakir, they spoke to the families of Kurdish
prisoners who are currently on hungerstrike in support of the
increasingly determined hungerstrike by thousands of Kurdish
political prisoners in Turkish prisons which has been running
since July 14 (and hardly reported). They heard of the brutal
suppression by the Turkish authorities of previous hungerstrikes,
with elderly women and children being taken into custody and
beaten.
     Hungerstrikes by families in Adana have met with a similar
swift reaction by police. Two Kurdish women set fire to
themselves in Adana and are currently in serious condition in
hospital. The NUJ delegates were told by hungerstrikers in
Diyarbakir that they were prepared to fast until death and if
necessary set fire to themselves to draw attention to the plight
of the Kurdish people in southeastern Turkey. When the delegation
tried to visit a second hungerstrike in the offices of the
Democracy and Change Party (DPP) they were turned away by
plainclothes police.
     The hungerstrikers are demanding that the Turkish government
consider the proposals made by PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan for a
political solution to the conflict, that the Geneva Convention be
applied to the so-called "dirty war" in southeastern Turkey, that
the UN and the Red Cross be given access to the region, and that
Kurdish prisoners be given Prisoner of War status.

Kurdistan Solidarity Committee
London

-----
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Ottawa, Ontario, K1V 8B9		E-mail: kcc at magi.com
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