Turkey: 13 Kurdish politicians tried in KCK case sentenced to 81 years in prison

July 9, 2013 By administrator

July 9, 2013

DIYARBAKIR, Turkey’s Kurdish region,— Thirteen Kurdish politicians tried in KCK (Kurdish Communities Union) Ceylanpınar case were sentenced to six years and three months in prison each.

The final hearing of the KCK (Kurdish Communities Union) Ceylanpınar trial resumed at Diyarbakir 9th High Criminal Court. Fourteen detainees, two under arrest, have been tried in the case which ended up with the acquittal of one and arrest of thirteen others.

The court board rejected lawyers’ demand for the acquittal of all defendants, ruling the continuation of the arrest of two detainees and imprisonment of eleven others on charges of “being members of an illegal organization”. Among those sentenced to prison are BDP Ceylanpınar district executives Cemil Tuncer and Abdulbaki Can, former deputy mayor of Ceylanpınar, Ahmet Dağtekin, four members of the town council, two district representatives of MEYADER and two members of the provincial council. BDP Ceylanpınar district executive Halil Şahin was acquitted.

Strongly reacting to the court’s ruling, Hasan Karaoğlan, a member of the town council, who was also sentenced to six years and three months in prison,www.ekurd.net criticized the court for making a political decision just like all other courts conducting the KCK cases across the country. Karaoğlan remarked that the indictment consisted only of legal party works and activities. He said they believed the supreme court would revoke the prison sentences, adding that democratization of the judiciary was the only way to prevent further scandalous cases in history like those witnessed in the period of the 12 September military coup in 1980.

The KCK-trial began on October 18, 2010 when a Turkish court began the trial of 152 high profile Kurdish politicians and rights defenders, accused of being the urban wing of the outlawed separatist Kurdish PKK rebels.

Over 7748 people were taken into custody and over 3895 persons were arrested in the scope of KCK operations during the past nine months,www.ekurd.net the pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party announced. Dozens of BDP executives and employees are still in prison.

Source: Ekurd.net

Saudi Arabia, Qatar & the Struggle for Influence in Syria: (The Bond Between the Monarchies is Fraying)

July 9, 2013 By administrator

Article by Eric Draitser- Boiling Frogs Post Contributing Author, Analyst & Producer

This week’s resignation of Ghassan Hitto, the so-called “Prime Minister in waiting” of the Syrian Opposition Coalition, coupled with the July 6^th election of Ahmed Assi al-Jarba to head the umbrella coalition of US-supported proxy groups attempting to topple the Assad government, has revealed further cracks in the edifice of the imperialist assault on Syria.

Qatar’s Man in the Middle

Ghassan Hitto, the Syrian expatriate and technocrat from Texas, was seen by most informed observers as the darling of the Muslim Brotherhood and Qatar. As noted by AFP shortly after Hitto’s election:

Some coalition members described Hitto as a consensus candidate pleasing both the opposition’s Islamist and liberal factions. But some of the 70-odd Coalition members withdrew from the consultations before the vote could take place, accusing opposition heavyweight Muslim Brotherhood of imposing Hitto as a candidate.

Indeed, the imposition of Hitto as the political face of the foreign-backed opposition was seen by many inside the opposition and around the world as a power-play by Qatar to control the direction of the conflict in Syria and establish Doha as the real center of power in a post-Assad Syria.

This connection between Hitto, the Muslim Brotherhood and Qatar was the source of much tension within the opposition. The NY Times reported that:

[Hitto] faced several challenges: he was seen by some rebels and activists as out of touch with the country, and some members of the often-squabbling coalition complained that he was a favorite of the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood and of its main foreign backer Qatar. Many in the opposition say Qatar wields too much influence in the movement.

What became clear during the course of Hitto’s short tenure as the public face of the foreign-backed opposition was that he was less a political leader than a proxy of Qatar and the United States. This despite what can only be called competition between its allies in Doha and Riyadh who at times collaborate and at other times compete for power and influence among the extremist jihadi elements throughout the Middle East and North Africa. Essentially then, Hitto must be understood as a placeholder, a man whose responsibility was not to lead, but simply to act as a foothold for the al-Thani regime and the Muslim Brotherhood within the leadership of the opposition. The goal was of course to have Hitto in place for the potential fall of Assad, so that Qatar could immediately secure its control over the country in a post-Assad scenario.

Saudis Reclaiming Dominant Role?

Hitto’s resignation places even more significance on last week’s election of Ahmed Assi al-Jarba as head of the Syrian Opposition Coalition. Whereas Hitto was understood to be a proxy of Qatar, Jarba can be correctly characterized as a proxy of Saudi Arabia. As McClatchy News explains:

Jarba is a chief of the Shammar tribe, one of the Arab world’s most powerful clans with members stretching from southern Turkey to Saudi Arabia…He was jailed early in the revolt against Assad…After being released from prison in August 2012, he fled to Saudi Arabia where his tribal connections put him into close touch with senior members of the Saudi intelligence services.

It should be noted that the innocuous-sounding phrase “close touch with senior members of Saudi intelligence” is a euphemism for Saudi agent, which is precisely what Jarba is. Note the fact that, like Hitto, Jarba has already stated publicly his opposition to peace talks with the Assad government, thereby perpetuating the cycle of violence that benefits Riyadh and Doha and costs more innocent Syrians their lives.

Jarba has said that “Geneva in these circumstances is impossible.” However, one must consider precisely which “circumstances” he was referring to. Keen political observers who have been following events in Syria for some time understand the “circumstances” to be the continued military defeats of the foreign-backed rebels and jihadis by the forces of the Assad government. Jarba and his Saudi handlers understand quite clearly that they must first achieve substantive military victories on the ground before they can even pay lip service to peace talks.

It is precisely this desperate need for tactical victories by the rebels that has driven Saudi Arabia to become even more involved in fomenting this war. Using Jarba as their proxy, the Saudis have attempted to launch a new and perhaps even deadlier phase of the war against Syria. In his first two days as head of the coalition, Jarba has already announced that the rebels will soon receive “a new shipment of sophisticated weapons from Saudi Arabia” as well as proposing a truce during Ramadan.

However, these announcements should be interpreted as cynical ploys designed to buy time for Saudi arms to reach their destination and for the rebels to train in their use. Jarba said as much when he proclaimed to Reuters, “I will not rest until I procure the advanced weapons needed to hit back at Assad and his allies. I give myself one month to achieve what I am intent to do.” So, while proposing a one-month truce under the cover of religious piety in the observance of Ramadan, Jarba gives himself exactly that same one month window to procure advanced weapons. The hypocrisy and duplicity needs no further explanation.

Saudi Arabia and Qatar have a complicated relationship, at times friendly and at other times acrimonious. Throughout the course of the destabilization and subversion of Syria, the two countries have collaborated in the funding, arming, and importation of jihadi elements from throughout the Muslim world. They have both been linked to intelligence agencies of the imperial Western powers while maintaining close contact with terror networks foreign and domestic. As such, both countries have played the indispensable role of intermediary between these disparate forces. However, now that the threat to their terrorist proxies in Syria is an existential one, and Assad victories become ever more decisive, it seems the bond between the monarchies is fraying. The recent changes in the political leadership of the so-called opposition merely reflect this.

Eric Draitser- Boiling Frogs Post Contributing Author, Analyst & Producer Eric Draitser is an independent geopolitical analyst based in New York City. He is the editor and host of StopImperialism.com and the Stop Imperialism podcast.

Sojourn to Western Armenia: From Ancient Cities to Modern Realities

July 9, 2013 By administrator

BY MARIA TITIZIAN

We left the now-beloved city of Ani behind, but a secret promise was made to return one day only for her. Spending a few hours in that once majestic Armenian capital currently on Turkish territory was fiercely unfair to its history, heritage and legacy…it warranted days, weeks perhaps even a lifetime of introspection and discovery. That was one of the first lessons that I learned on this trip to Western Armenia.

As we drove away Ani got smaller and smaller until it finally disappeared from view. Our van now sped along the lonely stretch of highway toward Doğubayazıt. Crudely made houses, mostly out of mud, had several satellite dishes mounted on their roofs. The juxtaposition of the modern with the ancient left me feeling slightly bewildered, it felt as though we were at the juncture where the old met the new with no common language to bridge the divide. The homeowners and landowners in this region of Turkey were not Turks but Kurds. In fact, most of present-day Western Armenia is inhabited by Turkish-Kurds…

As we drove along the slopes of Mount Ararat we could see the hardened lava flows resulting from volcanic eruptions. Nothing grew there, it almost looked like the surface of some other worldly planet pockmarked with craters and meandering crevices. It was strange to be so close to Ararat and yet so impossibly far. It was also on this point of the journey that we saw Yerevan for the first time from Western Armenia. So often we talk about Mt. Ararat being so close from Yerevan that we feel the need to reach out and touch it…this time I wanted so much to reach out to Yerevan…

In the late afternoon we arrived in Doğubayazıt which lies southwest of Mount Ararat. It was a messy, dirty city teeming with cars, motorbikes and bicycles. We saw a family of five on a motorbike; the father driving, the mother behind him, holding an infant and two more children holding on to their mother for dear life. From Doğubayazıt the smaller of Ararat’s two peaks was almost completely hidden. A large oval shaped cloud sat atop the main peak, resembling a hat as streaks of red and orange pierced the sky as the sun was settling in for the night. We spent the evening in Doğubayazıt, preparing ourselves for the next day’s journey to the city of Van where we would visit the Fortress of Van and then take a short boat ride to Akhtamar Island.

Early the next morning, we began our journey to Van. We were following an old map, trying to make sure we were on the right road. I can’t recall how long it took us to finally see the beautiful shores of Lake Van but I do remember the unbridled excitement in the van when we did see it. It was almost too much to bear. We quickly told the driver to stop so that we could get our first impression of this historic lake. The fusion of discovery and loss was slowly becoming a common theme on this trip. We continued on till we reached the city of Van where our first stop was going to be the famous fortress.

The Van Fortress or Citadel is a colossal and imposing structure built between the 9th and 7th centuries BC by the ancient kingdom of Urartu (prehistoric Iron Age Armenian kingdom centered in Lake Van in the Armenian Highlands).

The fortress was ominous, it could easily provide the perfect backdrop to a nightmare. The sky was overcast and there was a wind that cut to the bone. As we began climbing up, flocks of crows would swoop down upon us and then veer skyward. One of my friends commented that he had heard from someone that crows never leave the site where tragedy had taken place…I was having difficulty breathing not from the climb but from the strange energy that seemed to engulf the structure. I needed to descend, to escape the haunting quality of the place when a small Kurdish boy approached me and started speaking Turkish. I shook my head and said, “Ermeni.” He immediately switched to English and began regurgitating a memorized historical monologue about how the Armenians had once lived here…I quietly listened to him and then began climbing down to escape the suffocating aura of the citadel.

Once we had reassembled at the base of the fortress, a group of local Kurds approached the men in our group and through our Kurdish interpreter wanted to know if we had “the maps” with us. By this they meant had we come to dig up our forefathers’ golds and riches long known (to them) to have been buried at the foot of the fortress before they were massacred or forced off their historic lands. I was nervously watching this warped interchange, feeling sick to my stomach. The Kurds told us to come back at midnight with “the map” to dig up the treasure, which we would then divide equally amongst us….We agreed but never returned. The idea was a knife that cut to our hearts.

The next day, we headed toward the small dock where a boat would take us to the island of Akhtamar where we would finally get to see the 10th century Cathedral Church of the Holy Cross, a masterpiece of Armenian church architecture…The exterior of the church is covered in bas-relief carvings depicting scenes from the Bible. We could not enter the church because it was under renovation by the government of Turkey. We were able to explore the island where we stumbled upon countless stone crosses and other artifacts strewn about. The island was covered with almond trees and as we roamed about the grounds we felt suspended in time and space. Our friend brought almonds back to Armenia with him from Akhtamar Island. He planted them on his property, where they continue to live and thrive today. We filled old water bottles with soil which we also brought back and mixed with our soil in Armenia. We collected pieces of rocks and stones, took videos and photos and stood on the cliffs of the island to let the spirit of the lake fill our lungs and feed our souls. The overwhelming sense of loss that I had felt in Ani did not follow me here to the island…here, I felt light and radiant, and instead of loss, the discovery of the Holy Cross Church, of this spectacular monument that had somehow survived the onslaught of hatred and annihilation filled me with pride.

We left the island and returned to the sand-covered beach by the dock. My husband announced that he had not come all this way not to dip his feet into the waters of Lake Van and proceeded to take off his shoes and socks, rolled up his pants and walked into the frigid waters. In his hand he had two water bottles which he proceeded to fill with the salty waters of the lake while I stayed a safe distance inland to videotape his labors. Talking incessantly while filming to ensure that our children had a recorded memento of our trip to the “other side of the border” a strong wave unexpectedly rolled in, almost knocking my husband over and completely derailing my plans for staying dry. It was the first time we had laughed in days and truly felt light hearted as the waves kept coming…it was as though the lake was sending us a message, beseeching us to return. I will never forget that moment full of such joy and an almost irreverent peacefulness and oneness with our history.

When he left Van, we drove through the cities of Mush, Erzerum, Ardvin and then on to Hopa on the shores of the Black Sea until we crossed the border into Georgia and spent the night in Batumi.

The stories along the way are countless. We traveled back in time, through time and with the spirit and love, memories and narratives of our grandparents on our shoulders. We witnessed greatness and loss, we saw the ghostly towns and cities of our forefathers now inhabited by Kurds and Turks. We saw churches that had been destroyed or converted into mosques or had undergone controversial “renovations.” We had lived and breathed the past with all its trajectories.

Among the multi-layered stories and experiences we were blessed with on this journey, a particular one will forever stay with me. One of our friends discovered that in the dark forgotten recesses of her memory, she had stored much of the Turkish language she had heard as a child from her grandmother and which she thought she had forever lost. As the days wore on and as we moved from city to city, traveling through the past, she slowly began to remember and by the time we reached the city of Hopa she was able to converse in Turkish. I wonder how deeply and profoundly she must have been affected by this journey to be able to recall a language she thought was lost… such was the power of the past.

For my part, the defining moment was when we approached the Armenian border. It was bittersweet because I desperately wanted to get back to Yerevan where we had left our children alone for the first time ever yet I knew that our very short sojourn into the past was coming to an end. I would be entering the borders of present-day Armenia but what I didn’t know is that I would be making the re-entry as a different person. We got out of the car to present our passports and clear Armenian customs. I had to suppress the urge to walk up to the young Armenian soldiers at the border and embrace them and thank them for protecting all that is left of the ancient Armenian Kingdom…for I had see all that we had lost and because I had seen it, I appreciated even more what is left. I appreciated it with my heart and my head for I finally began to understand the value of what it meant to have an independent state.

This is the message, the story, the narrative that I want to impart. Without ceasing to demand for the restoration of our historical rights, we need to simultaneously and with the same passion embrace the Armenia we have today. We have to accept it and love it and put aside unrealistic expectations and faulty notions. It is not the homeland that existed in the dreams of our grandparents, it never will be. We have to create and construct the modern homeland of our dreams, not theirs. We are living the dream. We are free and independent, we have the makings for democracy, stability and prosperity, we have the institutions and the resources, we just now need to find the will, define the mechanisms, and utilize our capacity to make it stronger and better. This is the burden of our generation, of the Armenians living in the homeland and in the Diaspora. The historical imperative to move forward with a new narrative has never been so pressing then it is today. I cannot imagine nor do I want to imagine a day that these liberated lands that I have the honor to walk on become a story of loss and memory…

Prosecutor General: Armenia Should Have Its Territories Back

July 9, 2013 By administrator

YEREVAN—Indeed, the Republic of Armenia should have its lost territories returned and the victims of the Armenian Genocide should receive material compensation. But all these claims must have perfect legal grounds, said Armenian Prosecutor General Aghvan Hovsepyan at a conference of lawyers ahead of the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide, initiated by the Ministry of the Diaspora.

International insurance agencies decided in 2007 to pay the heirs of the victims of the Armenian Genocide, but payments have recently stopped. According to the prosecutor general, the reason is pressure from Turkey. Aghvan Hovsepyan said that if Armenia possessed undeniable legal arguments, this process would have a logical outcome. According to him, this issue is up to the Armenian lawyers to solve.

“It has been a century since Armenian-Turkish relations froze, Aghvan Hovsepyan says. Though many countries recognized and condemned the Armenian Genocide, we have no significant results. I’m sure we will be at the same point in another century. Turkey’s policy of denial and geopolitical circumstances are not the only reason. I strongly believe that our position on the recognition of the Armenian Genocide and on Armenian-Turkish relations is also a reason,” said Hovsepyan.

He added that the recognition of the genocide is only one element of the Armenian cause. The settlement of Armenian-Turkish relations is of a legal character and it should be reached on the grounds of international rights. This, according to the prosecutor general, means that all international pacts related to the Armenian people and their territories should be examined.

“Otherwise we will have what we have now,” said Aghvan Hovsepyan.

Hovsepyan thinks it is wrong to not answer the Azeri balderdash that Syunik, Yerevan and Artsakh are Azeri territories.

“Wouldn’t it be more effective if we gave legally grounded answers to Azeris. For instance, in accordance with the Moscow pact of 1921, Nakhichevan was separated from Armenia and as an autonomous region was given to Azerbaijani patronage. Disregarding the legality of the Moscow pact, I should note that in 1923, Azerbaijan’s Central Committee revised the previous decision and included Nakhichevan in its composition. This decision was such an evident violation of international rights that even Turkey issued a protest note against it. Can we affirm Nakhichevan is an inseparable part of Armenia and that Azerbaijan occupied it? Of course we can, but somehow we are silent,” said Aghvan Hovsepyan.

Dwelling on international agreements relating to Armenia, the prosecutor general said that the Armenian-Turkish border is not regulated. “We have territorial disputes with both Azerbaijan and Turkey”. According to the prosecutor general, in order to solve these issues, it is necessary to work out a large package of claims with relevant legal grounds and introduce it before the authorities of Armenia with the view of submitting it to the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the principal judicial organ of the United Nations.

“I’m sure if Azerbaijan had at least one-one hundredth of our legal ground, it would have long applied not only to the International Court of Justice, but to all possible avenues”, said the prosecutor general, asking to not forget that time is working against us.

Activists in Turkey discuss steps toward Armenian Genocide recognition

July 9, 2013 By administrator

July 09, 2013 | 11:11

ISTANBUL. – The “Say No to Racism and Nationalism” movement in Turkey convened a conference on July 6.

During the event, the progressive activists of the Turkish society discussed the steps that need to be taken ahead of the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide.

The participants examined the activities that were conducted in the previous years and toward the recognition of the genocide, and a proposal was made to discuss the steps to be taken in the lead-up to the 100th anniversary of the genocide, reports Istanbul’s Agos Armenian bilingual weekly.

It was noted that the objective of this initiative is to bring the Armenian Genocide issue on the agenda and to hold an open discussion.

Also, it was decided to implement a number of steps to keep genocide recognition on the agenda.

Police fire tear gas, water cannon to push back Gezi Park protesters in Istanbul

July 8, 2013 By administrator

Published time: July 08, 2013 16:41

Turkish police used water cannon and tear gas to disperse protesters who tried to defy a closure order and enter Istanbul’s Gezi Park. The park was the focal point of nationwide protests against Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan in June.

Istanbul’s Gezi Park, which has been the focus of several weeks of tensions in the country, was briefly opened to the public on Monday.

Athens mayor ‘physically attacked’ over job cuts

July 8, 2013 By administrator

Athens Mayor George Kaminis has been attacked by local authority workers protesting against job cuts tied to Greece’s financial bailout.

Mayor Kaminis was “physically attacked” on Sunday by suspected union workers protesting job cuts, his office announced, according to AFP. The incident happened as the mayor was leaving a Confederation of Greek Municipalities (KEDE) meeting, where he held discussions about the austerity measures and the way they affect thousands of municipal employees.

According to reports, he was struck by unionists representing municipal workers outside the building. Kaminis was checked in to hospital where he was treated for minor injuries.

After being discharged, Kaminis issued a statement blaming POE-OTA union and its leader, Themis Balasopoulos, for the assault.

“By targeting the mayor of Athens, who has spoken clearly on all issues, the POE-OTA president is trying to cover up his longstanding embroilment in the clientelistic system in local government,” the mayor’s office said, accusing Balasopoulos of leading union members “down a dangerous road”, local papers reported.

In turned POE-OTA condemned the attack blaming provocateurs for the incident, saying it was “damaging for the just fight of local authority workers”.

KEDE has also spoken out against the assault. “The Board of KEDE strongly condemns the fascist and unacceptable attack against the Mayor,” the confederations said in a statement.

Municipal employees are scheduled to protest in Athens on Monday against the government’s decision to implement a labor mobility scheme which would mean either transferring employees to different departments or cancelling their contracts.

Some 25,000 civil servants must be transferred by the end of the year and another 4,000 made redundant to gain access to the Troika’s 8.1 billion euros bailout funds.

Eurozone finance ministers will meet Monday to discuss further authorization of funds conditional on Greece being on track with its reform process.

Islamist Party a Surprise Force in a New Egypt

July 8, 2013 By administrator

NYT: By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK.

CAIRO — A party of ultraconservative Islamists has emerged as an unexpected political kingmaker in Egypt, shaping the interim government after the military’s ouster of President Mohamed Morsi. The Al Nour party, widely regarded two years ago as bumbling amateurs, now has unique leverage. It was the only Islamist party to support removing Mr. Morsi, despite his ties to the more moderate Islamists of the Muslim Brotherhood. And the sight of Al Nour’s bearded sheik, standing behind the general who announced the takeover on television, was the only signal to Egyptian voters that the move had not been an attack on Islam, as some of the ousted president’s supporters are saying.

The party played a starring role in the military’s choreographed presentation of its takeover as the chance to reunify a country on the brink of civil war between opponents and supporters of Mr. Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood. But while Al Nour’s leaders say they intend to build bridges, some liberals say the party is pushing potentially divisive demands, from picking a new prime minister to keeping Islam prominent in any new constitution.

Over the weekend, Al Nour tested its leverage for the first time to force the retraction of an announced plan to name a liberal icon, the Nobel Prize-winning diplomat Mohamed ElBaradei, as interim prime minister.

“You just can’t do something like that, after we had appeared right next to you on the scene” at the televised announcement, Younis Makhyoun, a Nour party leader, said on Sunday. “We have grass roots,” Mr. Makhyoun added, “and they don’t agree on the choice of ElBaradei.”

Instead, state news media outlets reported on Sunday that the interim government was close to naming as acting prime minister Ziad Bahaa el-Din, a former head of Egypt’s investment authority. A Nour leader blessed him in a radio interview as “one of the liberal figures that we greatly respect.”

The party’s ability to block Mr. ElBaradei from the premiership raised new alarms from liberals about what the ultraconservatives, known as Salafis, might demand next, even after the expulsion of the more moderate Brotherhood.

“This stage of the revolution was against this type of Islamist party,” said Shady el-Ghazaly Harb, one of the organizers of the anti-Morsi protests. “We will not have any concessions when it comes to writing the constitution, and we will die for that,” he added, vowing that the charter should include “a separation of religion and politics, because parties should not be built on religion.”

Other organizers of the protests that helped force Mr. Morsi from office said they would stage new demonstrations in part against Al Nour.

Many of the party’s old Islamist allies, meanwhile, are denouncing Al Nour’s leaders as traitors, if not apostates, for turning on Mr. Morsi and the Brotherhood.

“They are being used to beautify or whitewash this military coup,” said Gehad el-Haddad, a Brotherhood spokesman. “They are making enemies on both sides.”

For the sheiks of Al Nour, though, the Brotherhood’s fall is also an extraordinary opening. “They have a chance to be the main Islamist player in politics in post-Morsi Egypt,” said Samer Shehata, a political scientist at the University of Oklahoma who studies Egypt’s Islamists.

“They see an opportunity to capitalize on the Brotherhood’s loss of support,” he said. “Who is left in formal politics under the banner of Islam now? It is the Nour party.”

The bedfellows could not be stranger. Since its inception two years ago, the Nour party has campaigned more than anything else for constitutional provisions enshrining Islamic law, not just “the principles of Islamic law,” as Egypt’s charter read for three decades. Al Nour and other Salafist parties sought to give religious scholars a constitutional power to strike down any legislation that they deemed contradictory to Islamic law. But in the drafting of the country’s new Constitution last year, the Muslim Brotherhood sided with the liberals to block such a provision. Al Nour succeeded in preventing an express guarantee of equality for women from being written into the new charter, and it has defended prohibitions of heresy.

Excessive use of force during Gezi protests should be punished: Council of Europe

July 8, 2013 By administrator

STRASBOURG

The Council of Europe commissioner for human rights has said the excessive use of force during the Gezi protests should not go unpunished.

“All instances of excessive use of force by the police must be fully investigated and adequately punished,” said Nils Muiznieks, the Council of Europe commissioner for human rights at the end of a five-day visit to Istanbul and Ankara, during which he discussed the Gezi Park protests and other human rights issues.

The commissioner recalled that, according to the case law of the European Court of Human Rights, the failure to effectively investigate the misconduct of security forces was a human rights violation in itself, and that Turkey had been condemned on numerous occasions by the court precisely for this reason.

The commissioner had received serious allegations of human rights violations committed by law enforcement forces against demonstrators, backed up by witness accounts, photos, videos and forensic evidence, as well as the number of deaths and injuries over the course of the events. Most of these reports concerned excessive and improper use of tear gas, and ill treatment by police at the time of apprehension. On the other hand, members of the government and security forces considered the use of force proportionate in view of the actions of marginal groups hijacking the demonstrations, except for isolated incidents which are under investigation.

“The only way to bridge this gap in perceptions, and to allow the healing process Turkey needs, is to conduct independent, impartial, and effective investigations with the involvement of victims into all allegations of misconduct by security forces, in accordance with the clear guidelines of the Strasbourg court. Given Turkey’s track record before the court, this requires a novel approach and determination by all relevant actors,” said the commissioner.

The commissioner added that those demonstrators who resorted to violence must obviously also face the consequences of their actions, but said it must be the absolute priority of every democratic state to safeguard the trust of their citizens in law enforcement by combating impunity.

Women’s rights are systematically violated in Azerbaijan: Feminists revenge official, sending him a blow-up doll

July 8, 2013 By administrator

Feminist activists in Azerbaijan have sent a blow-up doll to a government official who said that the proper place for women was either “in the grave or in the kitchen,” writes Magerram Zeynalov in the article published in IWPR site.

According to the publication comments made by transport ministry spokesman Namik Hasanov saying that “a woman’s place is only in the kitchen. Even in the 22nd century” provoked fury among women’s rights defenders across the country.

Hasanov’s comment was particularly ill-timed as it came just before International Women’s Day on March 8.

To formulate a response, a Facebook group was set up to discuss possible options. Members collected 200 manats, about 260 US dollars, to buy an inflatable sex toy abroad, since such things are not available in local shops.

The group waited until just before Armed Forces Day on June 26 – which they described as “Man’s Day”– to send the official their gift.
“In making his comment, Hasanov gave us women a present for the women’s holiday, so we tried to reply in kind,” said Ulviya Mamedova, one of the activists behind the plan. “We aren’t trying to offend anyone. We just want Namik Hasanov to respect women’s rights.”

While the sex toy was meant as a light-hearted stunt, campaigner say sexist stereotypes remain a serious problem in Azerbaijan. At a June 20 press conference, the campaigners publicised an open letter addressed to Hasanov.

“We’re sending you this technological innovation just in case you aren’t already aware of it. We hope our present will look good in your kitchen, or in a grave somewhere,” the letter said.

According to Mamedova, the letter “reminded Namik Hasanov of the international conventions to which Azerbaijan has signed up, and the obligations our country has assumed. We also remind him of the laws of the land, of which he may be unaware,” she said.

Interviewed later by RFE/RL, Hasanov said he never intended to cause offense, but then went on to dig himself deeper. “My comments about women were taken out of context. In actual fact, I just think women look best in the kitchen,” he said. “I don’t want a woman to destroy her family for the sake of her work or career. I’m not saying women shouldn’t work – it’s just that I think that if women spend a lot of time working, it will destroy their families,” he said.

Matanat Azizova, head of the Women’s Crisis Centre, said Hasanov’s comments were particularly worrying as they set the tone for other officials.

“When the journalists interviewed Namik, they were speaking to him as a representative of the state,” she said, describing his comments as “as a kind of instruction to all state employees on how they should treat women”.

According to the article, the casual denigration of women translates into systemic discrimination. In the Global Gender Gap survey for 2012, produced by the World Economic Forum Azerbaijan came in 99th out of 135 countries – below every other former Soviet state included on the listing.