Basque PEN Clubs statement, regarding the operation against ROJ TV 

 

 

 

 
 

On 4th March the Belgium police a broad operation in different cities of the country. Among others, Kurdish television channel ROJ TV was raided, several journalists and members of the staff were arrested and the studios were severely damaged. According to the administration of ROJ TV “our satellite tv Station Roj TV was raided by 300 hundred of Belgium police and Turkish special forces on thursday morning of 4.03.2010. Most of Roj TV studios and transmissions facilities and equipments were destroyed. The damages were estimated at one million and one hundred thousand euro. Most of the transmission equipments were taken away and the rest that were left behind has been smashed into peaces”. Therefore, ROJ TV had to suspend its broadcasting.

 

      The day Basque PEN Club publishes this statement, the journalist Burhan Erdem, Bar?? Güllü, Murat Yaklav and Zana Azadi and the general director of ROJ TV Gülshen Emsiz remain in detention. TV studios are smashed and ROJ TV's voice had to be suspended temporarily.

 

        We want to remind Stockholm Mayor Margrethe Livh's words, who described the operations to have been aimed at applying pressure, saying that "this was a grave violation of freedom of expression against the Kurdish people. Accusations based on such weak proof are neither just nor rational". There have been protests in front of the in Bordeaux, Basel and other European cities.

 

         ROJ TV broadcasting director Ahmet Dicle stated that "our broadcastings were aimed to be obstructed by sabotage". According to Dicle, the raid started at 5.00 am and lasted for twelve hours. 200 computers were confiscated as well as the editorial information system, the computer and other devices belonging to Reuters news agency Roj TV is subscribed to, image and voice special effect machines, more than 20 laptops, private goods and clothes and food of the employees. "The remaining things are broken, all the cables have been cut", Dicle described the search. Dicle asked the Belgium government to return the confiscated devices and technical equipment.

 

"The raid carried out on Roj TV was not a routine raid at any arbitrary institution. This pirate-like operation was carried out in contrast to Belgium and European law. We are broadcasting as a company and our doors are always open...". Dicle has no doubt about who is behind this operation: "We and Belgium authorities believe that this was not a legal and legitimate operation but a political one. The ones who conducted this raid are the same people that terrorize the Kurdish people and Kurdish institutions in Turkey on behalf of the Turkish government". "This was not an operation against terrorism, but a terrorist operation against the Kurdish media and Kurdish institutions. In no other operation or investigation into any other television channel seven people got injured before. Our colleagues took medical reports. The people injured were not terrorists but journalists".

 

Basque PEN joins the concern and anger of the Kurdish communities and so many organizations and individuals working for Human Rights and Freedom of Speech. At the same time, we wish to express our condemn for this attack against a media that is the main referent for millions of Kurds. The voice of the Kurds' has been silenced very often in Kurdistan, and unfortunately, for millions of Kurds, broadcasts from the European exile are the only way to receive news about their own country. In front of this dramatic situation, the minimum Europe should do is to express its support and solidarity to the Kurdish people, and to offer the resources of the democracy for the freedom of speech of the Kurds, while it demands to Turkey to engage in democracy and warrants that Kurds and any other citizen belonging to any other people has the right to speak freely in his/her own language.

 

The information, free speech, the broadcasting of different, even opposed opinions and voices, should not be taken as terrorism. Furthermore, we always saw the debate, which inequivocally means freedom of speech, as the way to overcome the violence. The recent attack in Belgium is both serious and tragic. We want to express our solidarity and send our warmest greetings to the colleagues of ROJ TV, and encourage them to keep their compromise with Kurdistan and the information, above all attacks. At the same time, we want to express our condemn against this attack against the freedom of speech, and ask to the Belgian government to solve quickly/ the damage caused by the raids, so that ROJ TV can work again freely above the neglect, harassment and annihilation polices against Kurds imposed by the Turkish State.

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