Turkish government mobilized its entire diplomatic force stationed both in New York and Geneva to prevent a human rights debate from taking place at the at the United Nations Geneva office, prompting outcry from human rights defenders.
With a series of unfounded allegations directed at the participants, Turkish foreign ministry officials had unsuccessfully lobbied to cancel the side event titled Turkey: Adverse Effects on Human Rights While Countering Terrorism” which was organized by a UN accredited non-governmental organization.
“The side-event took place at the Palais des Nations on March, 5 with the support of the Global Alliance MGF and the PEC, The Permanent Mission of Turkey in Geneva exerted pressure to remove civil society from the work of the Human Rights Council. The Press Emblem Campaign (PEC) denounces it firmly. The UN Director-General and the Office of the High Commissioner said that there was nothing against the speakers justifying an action against them”, the PEC statement said.
The panel discussion was moderated by Eric Sottas, secretary-general of the World Organization Against Torture, and attended by participants, Abdullah Bozkurt, Director of Nordic Research and Monitoring Network, and Levent Kenez, the Secretary General of the Stockholm Center for Freedom, which monitors rights violations in Turkey. Fionnuala D. Ni Aolain, UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms who was scheduled to attend to panel had to cancel her participation over what her office said scheduling conflicts.
Both Bozkurt and Kenez, veteran journalists who have been forced to live in exile in Sweden after massive crackdown on journalists in Turkey where 212 journalists were jailed as of Feb.27, 2019, were labelled by the government of president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan as “terrorists” for their critical views and writings. Bozkurt was the founder and publisher of the Reporters’ News Agency (Muhabir) in Turkish capital Ankara before the government shut it down in July 2016. Kenez was then editor-in-chief of a national daily newspaper Meydan and he was detained by the police over critical headlines.
During the panel discussion, Kenez presented cases of reporters who have been jailed in Turkey over published articles, tweet messages and commentaries made on TV debate programs. He said the work of journalists were incorporated in the indictments as if they were criminal evidence and terror activity. Many journalists were locked up behind bars for months and in some cases years before they were allowed to see the so-called criminal evidence presented against them by the prosecutors, Kenez said. He also added that Erdoğan government criminalized the critical editorial lines, dissenting views and challenging narratives based on facts and truth.
Targeting of the journalists were not random by the government at all, explained Bozkurt who said the Turkish government came after those who wrote about the pervasive corruption in the government and those who exposed Erdoğan’s links to armed jihadist groups in Syria and other countries including al-Qaeda and Islamic State in Iraq and Levant (ISIL). The goal is to silence voices that the public interest with revelations in wrongdoings in the government. The rest fell in the line and cowed into silence in Turkey, he added. “Now the government wants to shut down critical voices abroad even at the UN where I did work as a reporter and covered many issues before”, Bozkurt noted.
Independent journalists were replaced by political operatives in most media outlets in Turkey and false narrative was fed upon to the Turkish audience with fake news, half-truth and deceits, Bozkurt remarked. Bayram Altuğ, the reporter who works at the UN Geneva office for Turkish state-news agency Anadolu even issued threatening remarks against Bozkurt and said he would have kidnapped him to Turkey in his car after Bozkurt attended another event in Geneva in Nov.2018 to highlight the unprecedented threat to human rights in Turkey. The event was organized by the International Observatory of Human Rights (IOHR) at Geneva Press Club with the participation of British, Swiss and Dutch parliaments.
Anadolu operatives in various countries including in the United States were identified as harassing, tracking and threatening critical journalists who are forced to live in exile. According to the SCF’s report as of Feb.27, 2019 there are at least 168 Turkish journalists living abroad and wanted by Erdoğan government for an arrest.
Nordic Monitor published an extensive story in January detailing how Swiss counter-espionage investigators caught agents of the Turkish National Intelligence Organization (MİT) in the act as they were planning to abduct a Swiss-Turkish businessman who was critical of the government of Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
According to the plan, two Turkish diplomats, identified as Hacı Mehmet Gani, working under cover as press attaché, a position that is currently attached to Erdoğan’s Communications Office, and Hakan Kamil Yerge, second secretary at the Turkish Embassy in Bern, plotted to drug and kidnap the businessman.
MİT planned the abduction in the summer of 2016 during which time the Turkish government launched a major witch hunt against critics and dissidents, with the Gülen movement bearing the brunt of the persecution. The victim, who has been living in Switzerland for nearly 30 years, was seen as close to the movement, led by US-based Turkish Muslim scholar Fethullah Gülen, a vocal critic of the Erdoğan regime.
Swiss prosecutors issued arrest warrants against these two Turkish diplomats and the case is still pending with diplomats fled to Turkey.
Detaining tens of thousands of people over alleged links to the Gülen movement, the government also closed down some 200 media outlets, including Kurdish news agencies and newspapers.
The United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) opened its 40th regular session with an address by the UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres who stressed that the UNHRC was “the epicenter for international dialogue and cooperation” on the protection of all human rights. Michelle Bachelet, UN high commissioner for human rights, condemned Turkey’s prolonged crackdown on dissent following a failed coup attempt in 2016. The 40th session of the UN Human Rights Council will continue until March 22.
Turkey’s pro-government media outlets labelled the UN event attended by critical journalists as “terrorism propaganda”. Half a million innocent people have faced terrorism charges in the last three years in Turkey while government investigated some eight million including spouses, children and parents of critics, opponents and dissidents in 2017 alone. Overnight, Turkish government branded one-third of all its diplomats and one-third of all judges and prosecutors as “terrorists”with executive decisions without any effective administrative probe or certainly no judicial review in 2016. They were dismissed and/or jailed in unprecedented crackdown on critics in Turkey
The post Erdoğan gov’t fails to cancel UN Human Rights Council event on Turkey appeared first on Stockholm Center for Freedom.
from Stockholm Center for Freedom https://stockholmcf.org/erdogan-govt-fails-to-cancel-un-human-rights-council-event-on-turkey/
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