7 Oct 2010 | Index Index, minipost
The co-chair of the pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party has been convicted of ‘propaganda for an illegal organisation’ and handed a ten-month prison sentence.
Selahattin Demitras was punished for making a statement about the detention conditions of Abdullah Ocalan, the leader of the militant Kurdistan Workers Party, imprisoned in 1999.
Demitras’s lawyer Meral Danis Bestas said that her client’s statement should be evaluated in the context of the right to freedom of expression.
28 Sep 2010 | Index Index, minipost
A cartoonist is under investigation on suspicion of sedition. Zulkifli Awar Ulhaque, more commonly known as Zunar, was arrested on 26 September just hours before the launch of his new book — a collection of satirical political cartoons. Zunar was released on bail, but has gone into hiding for fear of being detained under the Internal Security Act. Most of the drawings in Zunar’s book Cartoon-O-Phobia have already been published on popular news site Malaysiakini, to which the cartoonist is a regular contributor.
22 Sep 2010 | Index Index, minipost
Angry police officers stormed into two radio station offices and attacked two staff members in Ghana’s second largest city on 16 September. Reports suggest the officers intended to attack a panelist, Francis Dodovi, who is a sympathiser of the ruling National Democratic Congress. The policemen claim Dodovi had been discrediting a demonstration staged by these police officers on discrimination charges on 15 September.
21 Sep 2010 | Index Index, Middle East and North Africa, minipost
Iran has sentenced a human rights activist, Shiva Nazar Ahari who is the founder of the Committee of Human Rights Reporters in Tehran, to six years in prison on charges of anti-government activities. Her lawyer said she has to pay a $400 fine as an alternative punishment to 74 lashes. n 13 september, Ahari was released from prison on bail of around USD$200,000. She was convicted of moharebeh or “waging war against God” and had received three years for that charge.
