Published on 8 April 2008
16 March 2010 - Judicial harassment of newspaper publisher makes journalism impossible in provincial region
2 March 2010 - Website editor to be tried on charge on insulting president
25 February 2010 - Website editor freed conditionally but still accused of belonging to terrorist group
Reporters Without Borders today criticised a Turkish court’s indefinite suspension of two pro-Kurdish websites and called for an explanation from the authorities, as the law requires.
The Ankara assizes court on 20 March ordered suspension of the website of the daily paper Gündem, Ozgurgundem.org, which has been inaccessible since 1 April and on 11 February that of the Firat news agency (ANF), firatnews.eu, both for alleged “propaganda in favour of the Kurdistan Workers Party.”
The worldwide press freedom organisation said the websites had never been officially informed of the court’s decisions and why exactly they had been suspended and had not been able to defend themselves.
Internet websites are routinely shut down when part of their content is deemed unsuitable. Access to YouTube inside Turkey has been blocked three times in the past year after it posted a video that a court said was insulting to modern Turkey’s founder, Kemal Atatürk.
Under the November 2007 law governing online publications and cyber-crime, websites can be suspended during judicial investigations. A military court banned the independent news site Indymedia without explanation on 1 April.
He is the editor of Erk, the last opposition newspaper in Uzbekistan until it was banned by the authorities in 1993, and he was jailed on 18 August 1999 in the wave of repression after the failed assassination attempt on President Islam Karimov in Tashkent on 16 February 1999.
