We — members of the Civic Solidarity Platform and the Sports For Rights Campaign — were relieved to learn that one of Azerbaijan’s most well-known political prisoners, Leyla Yunus, was released from detention yesterday and that that the Baku City Court of Appeal changed her sentence and that of her husband Arif into suspended sentences of 5 years, on probation. However, most of the charges against the couple have not been dropped and, while on probation, Leyla and Arif Yunus will not be able to leave the country. We remain seriously concerned about the state of health of Leyla Yunus, who has been diagnosed with diabetes and hepatitis C, and that of Arif Yunus, who suffers from high blood pressure. There are doubts that adequate medical assistance can be provided to Leyla Yunus in Azerbaijan.
As part of the ongoing civil society crackdown in Azerbaijan, Leyla and her husband Arif were arrested in late July and early August 2014, respectively. On 13 August 2015, they were convicted on charges of large‑scale fraud and tax evasion. Leyla was sentenced to 8.5 years in prison and Arif to 7 years. While in detention, they were humiliated by police officers, put in overcrowded cells, beaten several times and deprived of much needed medical treatment. On 13 November 2015, Arif Yunus was released under house arrest on health grounds. When ruling to change the sentences, the court of appeal dropped the charges of forgery, but retained others. The court also lifted the order to seize the house owned by the couple.
We, members of the Civic Solidarity Platform and the Sports for Rights Campaign, consider the new developments in the case of Arif and Leyla Yunus to be positive and a first step in the right direction. However, we continue to call for all charges against the couple to be dropped. Leyla Yunus requires an urgent medical examination and she should be granted the right to receive medical treatment abroad if necessary. Arif Yunus must also be provided with swift and adequate medical assistance.
Leyla and Arif Yunus are not the only political prisoners in Azerbaijan. Dozens of other civil society activists, human rights lawyers and journalists remain in detention or prison in Azerbaijan solely due to their professional activities and the peaceful and legitimate exercise of their fundamental rights and freedoms. They should be immediately and unconditionally released. The Azerbaijani government must respect its commitments before its own people, as well as its obligations under international human rights law.
Signed by:
Analytical Center for Interethnic Cooperation and Consultations
Article 19
Association UMDPL
Bulgarian Helsinki Committee
Baris Zvozkau Belarusian Human Rights House
Center for Civil liberties
Center for the Development of Democracy and Human Rights
Crude Accountability
Freedom Files
Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Serbia
Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights
Human Rights House Foundation
Human Rights Monitoring Institute
Human Rights Movement “Bir Duino-Kyrgyzstan”
Index on Censorship
International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH)
International Partnership for Human Rights
Kazakhstan International Bureau for Human Rights and Rule of Law
The top of Frederike Geerdink’s blog, Kurdish Matters, still reads: ‘The only foreign journalist based in Diyarbakir’. The Dutch reporter was the only foreign journalist in Turkish Kurdistan until 9 September 2015 when she was deported from the country she lived and worked for nine years.
“There I went in a military convoy, first from Yüksekova to Hakkari, then from Hakkari to Van,” Geerdink wrote a few days later. “As the soldiers were playing loud, rousing nationalist music, I realised that I had turned into a PKK target, being transported on a dark mountainous Kurdistan road in a military vehicle with windows too small to see the starry sky.”
From Van, she’d fly to Istanbul where she’d be forced on a plane back to her The Netherlands. A couple of days earlier she had been arrested while traveling with and reporting on the activities of a group of Kurdish activists who call themselves the Human Shield Group. She was accused of illegally entering a restricted zone and engaging “in an act that helped a terrorist organisation”.
After nine years in Turkey, three of which were in Kurdistan, Geerdink had lost her second home. “I left my heart in Kurdistan,” she posted on Facebook after she’d landed at Amsterdam Schiphol Airport. “I don’t know when, but I will return.”
In the same week when Geerdink was deported, the English version of her book, The Boys are Dead, about the Roboski massacre and the Kurdish question in Turkey, was launched. “A coincidence,” she told Index on Censorship. “I don’t think the Turkish government had planned to help me promote my book.”
A few weeks after her ordeal, she was living a nomadic life in The Netherlands, moving from place to place, staying with friends or family, not really feeling at home anywhere. “I don’t want to be here,” she said. “Don’t get me wrong, everyone is really kind, but I don’t belong here anymore. I want to be there.”
Turkey has one of the world’s worst records on media freedom. Index’s Mapping Media Freedom project has so far recorded 160 reports of violations against journalists in the country since May 2014. Reporters Without Borders has ranked Turkey 154th out of 180 countries on press freedom, and according to Freedom House, Turkey’s status declined from Partly Free to Not Free in 2013.
Reporting on the position of Kurds in Turkey is exceptionally difficult. Prominent journalists have been fired over their coverage of negotiations between the Turkish government and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). Kurdish and Turkish journalists are often targeted by the police and courts, although it is rare for a foreign journalist to be singled out.
Back in January 2015, Geerdink was arrested by the Turkish authorities for the first time. Her house was searched, she was briefly detained and faced up to five years in prison for ‘terrorist propaganda’. Her detention was condemned worldwide and she was acquitted of the charges in April. Her deportation just a few months later came as a big shock.
Now that even foreign journalists are being targeted, Geerdink said, shows just how bad things are for the position of Kurds in Turkey. “I was the only journalist based there and now there’s one less witness on the ground. And the fewer the witnesses, the more the state has a free hand.”
She added that her treatment should be a warning to others. “They are saying: ‘watch where you go or we’ll kick you out’.” On the other hand, she thinks her deportation brings a lot of negative publicity onto the Turkish government and how they treat journalists, which can be used to put more pressure on the authorities.
In September, two UK-based reporters for VICE were arrested while reporting in Diyarbakir. Although they were released, their Iraqi colleague remains in jail. Seven local journalists are currently detained in the country, many of whom are Kurds. Being a foreigner, Geerdink said the spotlight is on her, but there are many Kurds in prison who nobody knows about, and they deserve the same amount of publicity. “For them it is a matter of life and death.”
Geerdink hopes to return to Turkish Kurdistan as soon as she’s allowed back in. Her lawyers are working hard to appeal the verdict on her deportation. Meanwhile, she is focussing on Syrian Kurdistan, Iraqi Kurdistan and Kurds in Europe.
“I will still be Kurdistan correspondent no matter where I am based.”
Mapping Media Freedom
Click on the bubbles to view reports or double-click to zoom in on specific regions. The full site can be accessed at https://mappingmediafreedom.org/
Secular bloggers in Bangladesh are fearing for their lives as four fellow bloggers were killed by machete-wielding extremists in the country earlier this year. Those murdered formed part of a hit list of 84 secularists and atheists targeted by Islamic fundamentalist groups for expressing their views online. The list was first circulated in 2013.
One of the bloggers, Bangladeshi-born US citizen Avijit Roy, set up the community blog Mukto-Mona. He was murdered with a machete in Dhaka in February. His wife was also wounded during the attack. Roy’s murder was followed by that of fellow secular bloggers Ananta Bijoy Das, Niloy Chatterjee and Washiqur Rahman. Threats to Chatterjee’s life were ignored by police.
Many writers in Bangladesh now fear they will suffer the same fate, with a number of them under 24-hour police protection. While five men, including one British citizen, have been arrested in connection with the murders, no charges have been made.
In response to the attacks, each member of Index on Censorship’s Youth Advisory Board has been asked to produce a short video urging Bangladesh’s government to do more to protect bloggers’ rights to free speech and prevent further killings.
One board member from the US, Muira McCammon, who is currently studying for a masters in translation studies, explains how the Bangladeshi government’s reluctance to protect bloggers is leading people to question online safety. Her compatriot states that the views of atheists are just as important as those with religious beliefs.
South African human rights advocate Simeon Gready, along with two friends from Justice and Peace Netherlands, wants to raise awareness of bloggers under threat in Bangladesh.
Members of the board were asked to write a blog discussing one free speech issue in their country. The resulting posts exhibit a range of challenges to freedom of expression globally, from UK crackdowns on speakers in universities, to Indian criminal defamation law, to the South African Film Board’s newly published guidelines.
Ravian Ruys is a member of the Index youth advisory board. Learn more
“Haat imam” is a man whose life solely depends on the complete destruction of western values and interests, or so one would think if you were reading or watching the Dutch media.
It is a word used whenever we are talking of an imam whose views are considered either too conservative or too radical. In most cases, when someone is labelled a haat imam, they are subject to protest or no-platforming. In 2015, there have been three known cases of events being cancelled because some of the speakers were labelled haat imams. In these incidences, the individuals involved were investigated by Dutch security services and considered safe, meaning they were found to have no known links to terrorist organisations.
All this has led the Volkspartij voor Vrijheid en Democratie (People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy), a political party currently in power, to advocate a blacklist for radical preachers. The party warns that this blacklist should not only include those Muslim preachers who have known links to terrorist organisations, but also those who spread hate.
This means public pressure leads to the narrowing of freedom of speech for one specific group of people. It has also created a feeling of persecution surrounding young Muslims, made even worse by the deputy prime minister quoting flawed scientific research stating that 80 per cent of young Dutch-Turks support ISIS.
If you are a Muslim in the Netherlands, you are now in an environment where you feel you must be the nicest Muslim anyone has ever met or you can’t be trusted. Perversely, this lack of trust is often quoted as one of the things that drives young Muslim men and women into the arms of extremist organisations. Consequently, a policy trying to protect us against extremist propaganda works in favour of the extremists.
The Netherlands has a great reputation when it comes to freedom of speech and we should keep it that way. This means creating a fair and equal space for Muslims in our country to debate their religion on their terms. We might not always like what we hear, but we cannot intervene directly unless a direct threat is made against innocents. If we do not trust those involved, in other words, if we do not trust our fellow countrymen, how can we expect their trust in return?
Without trust, politics and civil society become a bloody mess.
