Paris- France: Reporters Without Borders condemned the “insane” sentence of 166 years and six months in prison given to Kurdish journalist Vedat Kursun on Friday 14th May.
Kursun was convicted under articles 314-3 and 220-6 of the criminal code and article 7-2 of the anti-terrorism law on charges of membership of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and spreading propaganda for the organisation.
“This sentence is absurd,” Reporters Without Borders said. “We support Kursun’s colleagues, who say this was a political trial. We regret the attitude of the Turkish judicial authorities, who are deliberately violating the rights that are protected by the European Convention on Human Rights although Turkey is a signatory.”
Kursun had been facing a possible sentence of 525 years in prison. Reporters Without Borders calls for Kursun’s release and urges the European Union to condemn this verdict.
Held since his arrest at Istanbul airport on 30 January, Kursun was given such a long sentence in part because he was convicted on a total of 103 counts of publishing PKK propaganda. An additional 12 years for membership of the PKK rounded off the total of 166 years in jail for just doing his job as a journalist. Aged 36, he would have to live to the age of 202 to complete the sentence.
The Kurdistan Worker Party (PKK) was founded in 1973 as the result of the continuous and systematic oppressions and the denial of the Kurdish nation by the occupying powers of Kurdistan. The PKK took up arm in 1984 since all the possible political and diplomatic means applied for 11 years in between 1973-84 proved exhausted. The PKK however declared its first unilateral ceasefire in 1993 since it believed the arm struggle hit its targets. Since 1993 to date the PKK has declared 6 unilateral ceasefires in 6 different occasions and called upon Ankara to solve the Kurdish problem in a peaceful democratic procedure.
Despite the facts that the PKK has declared 6 unilateral ceasefires and also it sent peace groups in two different occasions yet the PKK is considered as a ‘terrorist’ organization by Ankara and the US. It also continues to be on the blacklist in EU despite the court ruling, which overturned the decision to place the Kurdish freedom movement on the EU’s terror list “By labelling PKK as a terrorist organisation, the EU and the US are giving the Turkey a green light to target its civilians. They give the Turkish government a free hand to do what it will, a mother of Kurdish martyr said”.
It should be noted that after 1954, apart from the Korean war, 1949-52 and the invasion of Cyprus, 1974, the Turkish Army operations have continued to be exclusively against the Kurds.