25 Oct 2017 | Mapping Media Freedom, Media Freedom, News and features, Turkey, Turkey Uncensored
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This article was originally posted at platform24.org.
Journalists, writers and human rights defenders will appear before judges in several court hearings scheduled for the coming days.
P24 will be following the upcoming hearings from the courtrooms and live tweeting the developments. Here is a list of the upcoming hearings:
Oct. 24: First court hearing for journalists in e-mail leak case
Six journalists, three of whom have been imprisoned since late December, will have their first day in court on October 24.
Former Diken news portal editor Tunca Öğreten, news editor of the shuttered DİHA news agency Ömer Çelik and BirGün employee Mahir Kanaat, DİHA reporter Metin Yoksu, ETHA news agency Responsible Managing Editor Derya Okatan and Yolculuk daily publisher Eray Sargın were first arrested on December 25 in police raids in an investigation into publication of leaked e-mails of Berat Albayrak, Turkey’s energy minister. After a record 24 days in police custody, a criminal judgeship of peace ordered Çelik, Tunca and Kanaat jailed pending trial while releasing Okatan, Sargın and Yoksu, with a travel ban.
The journalists face terrorism related charges as well as the charge of “disrupting or preventing an IT system, amending or destroying data.”
The hearing will take place at the Istanbul 29th High Criminal Court at Istanbul’s Çağlayan Courthouse.
Oct. 24: Murat Aksoy, Atilla Taş and others
The next hearing of a case where journalist Murat Aksoy, ex-singer and a columnist for the shuttered Meydan daily Atilla Taş, Türk Solu journal writer Gökçe Fırat Çulhaoğlu and 26 others face coup and terrorism charges will be held on the same day at the Istanbul 25th High Criminal Court.
Almost all of the defendants in the case are journalists from a variety of media outlets, some of which were closed down under the state of emergency. 23 of the 29 defendants are imprisoned awaiting further trial
The first hearing of the case where all of the 29 defendants face terrorism charges took place on March 27-31, at the end of which the court ruled to release 21 of the 26 defendants in pre-trial detention. But none was released after 13 defendants whose release was sought by the prosecutor were arrested as part of a new investigation – this time on coup charges – and eight others were detained upon a successful appeal from the prosecutor against their release. One of the 13 defendants who were arrested as part of the new coup investigation, Zaman editor Ali Akkuş, was released shortly after his arrest.
Two other journalists charged with coup, Bünyamin Köseli of Aksiyon weekly and Cihan Acar of Bugün newspaper, were released at the end of the first hearing on August 18.
The court also ruled to merge the coup trial with the earlier terrorism trial. The hearing on October 24 is the first session to take place after the two cases were merged.
Oct. 25: Human rights activists to appear in court
The ten human rights activists who were detained at a workshop on Istanbul’s Büyükada island in July will appear before a court for the first time on October 25.
Eight of the human rights defenders are still imprisoned. They will be tried along with Taner Kılıç, head of Amnesty International Turkey, who was detained earlier in another investigation.
The hearing will begin at 10 a.m. at the Çağlayan Courthouse. The Istanbul 35th High Criminal Court will hear the trial, but the session will take place in the courtroom for the Istanbul 14th High Criminal Court.
The rights activists face up to 10 years in jail on charges of “helping an armed organization” while Kılıç faces up to 15 years for “membership in the FETÖ terrorist organization.”
Idil Eser, the Director of Amnesty Turkey; İlknur Üstün from the Women’s Coalition; Günal Kurşun from the Human Rights Agenda Association;Nalan Erkem from Citizens’ Assembly; Özlem Dalkıran, also from Citizens’ Assembly; Veli Acu, from Human Rights Agenda Association; Şeyhmus Özbekli, lawyer Nejat Taştan; Association for Monitoring Equal Rights digital strategy consultant Ali Gharavi; and trainer and writer Peter Steudtner were detained on July 5. Taştan and Özbekli were later released on probation.
Oct. 25: Case into publication of MGK documents
October 25 is also the date for the next hearing of a case where former Taraf journalist Mehmet Baransu, who has been imprisoned since March 2015, and the former responsible managing editor of the shuttered daily, Murat Şevki Çoban are on trial on charges of acquiring and publishing state secrets in relation with a news story that claimed the Fethullah Gülen network was blacklisted by the country’s top security body at a National Security Council (MGK) meeting in 2004.
Baransu faces up to 50 years and six months while Çoban faces up to 31 years in prison.
The session will be heard by the Istanbul Anadolu 10th High Criminal Court.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/4″][vc_icon icon_fontawesome=”fa fa-times-circle” color=”black” background_style=”rounded” size=”xl” align=”right”][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”3/4″][vc_column_text]
Since 24 May 2014, Mapping Media Freedom’s team of correspondents have recorded and verified 3,597 violations against journalists and media outlets.
Index campaigns to protect journalists and media freedom. You can help us by submitting reports to Mapping Media Freedom.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Oct. 26: Özgür Gündem solidarity case
On October 26, 13 journalists and writers will appear before judges at the Istanbul 14th High Criminal Court in a case where they face terrorism related charges due to their role in a campaign of solidarity with the Özgür Gündem daily, which was later shuttered.
Journalists İhsan Çaralan, Fehim Işık, Ertuğrul Mavioğlu, Celal Başlangıç, Celalettin Can, Öncü Akgül, Hüseyin Aykol, Ömer Ağın, Dilşah Kocakaya, Mehmet Şirin Taşdemir, Veysel Kemer and Yüksel Oğuz, as well as the head of the press workers’ union DİSK Basın-İş, Faruk Eren, are defendants in the case.
Oct. 31: Fourth hearing in Cumhuriyet trial
On October 31, the fourth hearing of the Cumhuriyet trial will be held at the Istanbul 27th High Criminal Court.
A total of 20 defendants, including one Twitter user who is not a Cumhuriyet employee, are on trial in the case. Cumhuriyet Executive Board Chair Akın Atalay, Cumhuriyet Editor-in-Chief Murat Sabuncu, reporter Ahmet Şık and the employee of the newspaper’s accounting department Emre İper are currently imprisoned and so is the Twitter user, Ahmet Kemal Aydoğdu.
Oct. 31: Özgür Gündem main case
Again on October 31, the main Özgür Gündem trial will continue at the Istanbul 23rd High Criminal Court.
İnan Kızılkaya, the responsible managing editor of the shuttered daily who has been imprisoned for more than a year and Kemal Sancılı, the daily’s owner who has been in prison since January, writer Aslı Erdoğan, linguist Necmiye Alpay, journalist Bilir Kaya, publisher Ragıp Zarakolu, lawyer Eren Keskin and politician Filiz Koçali are the defendants in the case.
Nov. 1: Third hearing in Nedim Türfent’s trial
Another journalist who will appear in court in the coming days is Nedim Türfent, a reporter for the shuttered Dicle News Agency (DİHA).
Türfent, who has been imprisoned since May 13, is accused of “membership in a terrorist organization” and “terrorism propaganda.”
Türfent will appear before the judges at the Hakkâri 2. High Criminal Court for the third hearing of his case.
Nov. 2: First hearing in insult case against Perihan Mağden
Columnist Perihan Mağden will appear before a court in the first hearing of a trial where she is charged with “insulting President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.”
The charge stems from an article published in April 2016 in which Mağden criticized a contestant in prime time TV show “Survivor” by likening him to President Erdoğan.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=”Don’t lose your voice. Stay informed.” use_theme_fonts=”yes”][vc_separator color=”black”][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]Index on Censorship is a nonprofit that campaigns for and defends free expression worldwide. We publish work by censored writers and artists, promote debate, and monitor threats to free speech. We believe that everyone should be free to express themselves without fear of harm or persecution – no matter what their views.
Join our mailing list (or follow us on Twitter or Facebook) and we’ll send you our weekly newsletter about our activities defending free speech. We won’t share your personal information with anyone outside Index.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/2″][gravityform id=”20″ title=”false” description=”false” ajax=”false”][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][vc_separator color=”black”][/vc_column][/vc_row]
25 Oct 2017 | Bahrain, Bahrain Statements, Campaigns -- Featured, Statements
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”95198″ img_size=”full” add_caption=”yes” alignment=”center”][vc_column_text]Bahrain’s Appeals Court convened in the second appeals hearing for Nabeel Rajab, who was sentenced to two years in July for speaking to journalists.
The Appeals Court heard a Ministry of Interior witness on 25 October. The proceedings were postponed to 8 November for the defence’s final arguments, according to a local pro-government paper. Rajab also faces a concurrent trial in which he faces up to 15 years in prison on charges related to his twitter profile. In all, Rajab faces up to 17 years in prison.
Sayed Ahmed Alwadaei, Director of Advocacy, Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy: “Nabeel Rajab’s sentence to two years is solely for speaking the truth and exposing the horrific violations in Bahrain. His imprisonment is a shameful evidence of Bahrain’s horrific human rights record and the UK’s shameful policy, which whitewashes the Al Khalifa monarchy’s brutality and intolerance.”
“The ongoing judicial harassment of Nabeel defies logic. This is a vindictive, punitive and politically-motivated process aimed at crushing a non-violent advocate of human rights for simply expressing his opinions on the state of Bahrain. We again call on the government of Bahrain to immediately and unconditionally release Nabeel. We urgently demand that the government of the UK raise the case with their counterparts,” Rachael Jolley, deputy CEO, Index on Censorship said.
The 2012 Index on Censorship Freedom of Expression Campaigning Award-winning Rajab is currently serving a two-year prison sentence. On 12 July, he was sentenced in absentia to two years in prison on charges of “spreading false news” under article 134 of Bahrain’s Penal Code. His appeal began in September.
The charges relate solely to TV interviews Rajab gave in 2014 and 2015. Without irony, prosecution papers from the criminal court proceedings, seen by BIRD, state that Rajab is being prosecuted for stating that the Bahraini government “derogates from freedom of opinion and of expression.” Bahrain’s prosecution has treated Rajab as a criminal for speech acts such as: “accusing the ruling system in the Kingdom of following a policy of repression” and of “arresting those opposed to the regime”; or alleging “the commission by responsible [government] bodies of crimes of killing and torture.” In the prosecution’s account Mr. Rajab has also made statements accusing the Bahraini government of “evasion of responsibility”; engaging in “sectarianism”; and “suppressing opposition and violating international agreements and covenants.”
Rajab was arrested on 13 June 2016 and has been detained ever since. He was held largely in solitary confinement in the first nine months of his detention, violating the UN Standard Minimum Rules for Non-Custodial Measures (Tokyo Rules) which state: “pre-trial detention shall be used as a means of last resort in criminal proceedings, with due regard for the investigation of the alleged offence and for the protection of society and the victim.”
In early April 2017, Rajab was admitted to the Bahrain Defence Force hospital for a necessary surgery. He was transferred back to police custody just a day later, before having recovered from his operation, and his health deteriorated significantly; from there he was transferred to the Ministry of Interior Clinic (Al-Qalaa), where he remains to date. Between April and August 2017, Rajab was unable to attend court, which held numerous hearings in his absence, including his sentencing.
Rajab faces a concurrent trial in which he faces up to 15 years in prison on charges related to his tweets exposing torture in a Bahraini prison and criticising the humanitarian cost of the war in Yemen. In September 2017, a new set of charges were brought against Rajab related to social media posts made in January 2017, when he was already in detention and without internet access. Rajab also faces a fourth set of charges related to a letter he penned to the New York Times in September 2016.
The UN Committee Against Torture has called for Rajab’s release.
The UK’s Middle East Minister Alistair Burt was , where he met with senior officials and expressed support for the government’s reform programme – a programme which only Bahrain and the UK claim exists. He said “The UK will continue to support Bahrain to deliver its ambitious reform initiatives, with a particular focus on rule of law and human rights.”
In the US, the Trump Administration this year removed Obama-era human Rights conditions on arms sales, one of which was the unconditional release of Rajab. In September, the Trump Administration approved the sale of F-16 jets worth $2.78 billion.
Husain Abdulla, Executive Director, Americans for Democracy & Human Riggs in Bahrain: “Trump’s policy in Bahrain and the Gulf is a threat to regional stability. Rewarding Bahrain’s human rights abusing rulers with fighter jets to be deployed in Yemen, after they imprison Nabeel Rajab, who has criticised that war, is disastrous decision making. It tells you everything you need to know about the US’s commitments to protecting human rights defenders.”[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_basic_grid post_type=”post” max_items=”12″ style=”load-more” items_per_page=”4″ element_width=”6″ grid_id=”vc_gid:1508927761300-582e12d5-6484-10″ taxonomies=”3368″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
25 Oct 2017 | Media Freedom, media freedom featured, News and features
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In 1976 All The President’s Men was released, barely two years after investigative journalism had claimed the biggest scalp on the planet, Richard Nixon’s. The film won four Academy Awards, and the American public awarded a gong to the news media: the highest trust rating journalists would ever enjoy. Seventy two per cent of people told Gallup they trusted the media a great deal or a fair amount. The corresponding figure is now 32%.
That, in a nutshell, is how the case is framed. A noble profession won the trust of the public on a hard road through Vietnam, Watergate and Thalidomide – and blew it by taking short cuts through self-regard, sloppiness and other people’s voicemails.
Does the case stack up? Some of it may, but here’s the rub. It rests on the belief that trust is a reliable guide to good journalism, and there’s precious little evidence that’s the case. The relationship between the trustworthiness of the media and the trust people invest in it is a very uncertain one.
At times in the past, the British public have trusted almost recklessly. Before the Second World War, when the BBC connived with the government to keep Winston Churchill and his anti-appeasement views off air, trust in the BBC was stratospherically high, the trustworthiness of the BBC somewhat lower. The dramatic collapse in trust, post-2000, had a lot to do with globalisation and wage stagnation and very little to do with new insights into media behaviour. Those came later.
Now the public hoards trust, and hands out little parcels to friends and “trusted sources” rather than the mainstream media. I worked at the BBC for 25 years and I saw its journalism become more trustworthy in most important respects: more accurate, more accountable, more open. Its reward? Higher trust ratings than any other news organisation in this country, but still a decline.
In this hostile terrain there are new and troubling factors, not least the arrival on the scene of media outfits, often aligned with populist political causes, which see trust as a zero-sum game. Part of their purpose, and part of the populist playbook, is to bleed trust from the institutions that came before. Often, what people worry about in that polarised environment is the erosion of a common baseline of facts. How do we have a democratic debate when we can’t even agree what facts we’re debating? But the worries shouldn’t obscure a genuine problem: what came before, politically and journalistically, was too narrow. The consensus excluded too many people.
To any part of the media that cares about being trusted, I’d say this: forget about a 72% trust rating, you’ll never see it again because the world has changed too much. In fact, forget about trust. The only thing you can control is trustworthiness; focus on that. Focus on integrity, accuracy, transparency, diversity, breadth. Trust will come and go, trustworthiness is forever.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=”Battle of Ideas 2017″ use_theme_fonts=”yes” link=”url:https%3A%2F%2Fwww.battleofideas.org.uk%2F|||”][vc_separator color=”black”][vc_column_text]A weekend of thought-provoking public debate taking place on 28 and 29 October at the Barbican Centre. Join the main debates or satellite events.[/vc_column_text][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/3″][vc_column_text]Political activism and protest today
Recent years have seen something of a revitalisation of political protests and marches, but just what is protest historically and today?
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/3″][vc_column_text]Do YOU trust the news media?
How can we know whether journalism, particularly reporting on complex issues or assessing notoriously difficult ideas such as risk, is accurate?[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/3″][vc_column_text]Censorship and identity: Free speech for you but not for me?
Is identity politics the new tool of censorship and, if so, how should we respond?[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][/vc_column][/vc_row]
24 Oct 2017 | Events
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”96667″ img_size=”full” alignment=”center”][vc_column_text]Risks, Rights and Reputations is led by Index on Censorship in partnership with What Next? and Cause4.
This vital half-day training for CEOs and chairs of trustees supports arts and cultural organisations to handle difficult subjects and sensitive stories to deliver the best work possible.
Navigating the rights and responsibilities of art that explores socially sensitive work can appear daunting, risky and time-consuming; the prospect of controversy, protest, police intervention and possible closure or cancellation because the work is provocative, or the funder is controversial, can be powerful disincentives. And yet great art has always fuelled controversy, and experimentation and risk-taking are integral to achieving excellent, relevant art.
“In recent years there have been an increasing number of high-profile cases raising ethical and censorship issues around plays, exhibitions and other artworks. Censorship – and self-censorship – can stand in the way of great art. That’s why Arts Council England is committed to supporting those organisations who are taking creative risks. It’s important such organisations are aware of relevant legislation and the excellent guidance that exists as well as, crucially, being supported by colleagues across the sector in similar situations. This programme is an important step in ensuring that our sector can continue to create vital, challenging, and risk-taking work.”
— Sir Nick Serota – Chair of Arts Council England
The training will support participants to:
- Deepen understanding of the legal and rights framework supporting artistic freedom in the UK
- Explore the impact on freedom of expression of BME artists of recent controversies in the arts
- Explore the dilemmas thrown up by ethical fundraising
- Support organisations to understand when and how to build a relationship with the police in relation to controversial work
We are delighted that Dave Moutrey (CEO of Home) and Jonty Claypole (Chair of Home) will be hosting the session and your trainers for the afternoon will be:
- Julia Farrington – Freedom of expression specialist from Index on Censorship
- Helen Jenkins – Fundraising consultant from Cause4
- Raheel Mohammed – Founder and Director from Maslaha
- A member of the Public Order and Public Safety training team from the College of Policing
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When: Monday 26 February 2018, 12:30–5:30pm
Where: HOME, 2 Tony Wilson Place, Manchester, M15 4FN
Tickets: £48 – £96 via Eventbrite
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