Kurdish community

State Surveillance, Counter-Terror Powers and Global Securitisation Strategies

 

Campaign Against Criminalising Communities (CAMPACC), Statewatch, National Union of Journalists (NUJ), Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom (CPBF), Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers invite you to a

PANEL DISCUSSION ON

State Surveillance, Counter-Terror Powers
and Global Securitisation Strategies

 

Tuesday 10 December 2013, 6.30-8.30pm

Venue: National Union of Journalists, 308-312 Gray’s Inn Road, London WC1X 8DP

 

Speakers:  Michelle Stanistreet, General Secretary, National Union of Journalists (NUJ); Tony Bunyan, Director, Statewatch, journalist and author the The Shape of things to Come; Rob Evans, Guardian journalist and co-author with Paul Lewis of Undercover: the True Story of Britain’s Secret Police; Matthew Ryder QC, Matrix Chambers, representing David Miranda; Dr Nafeez Ahmed author, investigative journalist, international security scholar,  environment writer for The Guardian; latest book, A User’s Guide to the Crisis of Civilization: And How to Save It. Les Levidow, CAMPACC

Chair: Kat Craig, Reprieve, Legal Director of the Abuses in Counter-Terrorism (ACT) and Vice-Chair of Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers

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Freedom of expression

Pinar Selek case reaches 15th year

Update and background information on the Pinar Selek case:

THE NIGHTMARE HAS ENTERED ITS 15TH YEAR

Approximately for the last fifteen years, a nightmare is imposed on Pinar Selek, her family and all of us who are waiting for justice. This case which has stopped being a legal mistake or a defect, and turned into a massacre of the law, has entered its 15th year.

The course of events when Pinar Selek was chosen as a target started during her research on the Kurdish Issue in 1997. Under the conditions of that period, her interviewing the parties of that conflict in order to understand and recount the conditions of the war and why peace couldn’t be made was not only brave but also dangerous. It was a time of the ‘memorandums’ which were later admitted as sham by the makers themselves, and when tanks strolled in the streets of the capital, Ankara, in order to ‘fine-tune’. The state was determined to solve the Kurdish Issue by war and by crushing it. Within this period, Pinar Selek was taken into custody by the Police Department on July 11th 1998, was heavily tortured and her research was confiscated because she refused to give the names of those she had interviewed. Continue reading “Pinar Selek case reaches 15th year” →

Freedom of expression, KCK trials, Peace process, Political prisoners

International lawyers groups issue joint statement on KCK lawyers trial

PRESS RELEASE. JUNE 21st, 2013

International delegation observing lawyers trial 20 June in Istanbul

 

Today we, the undersigned, being a delegation of lawyers from five European countries, observed the fifth hearing, on the 20th June, 2013, of the trial of 46 lawyers, our colleagues, who face prosecution for being members of an illegal organisation, allegedly in the course of undertaking their professional duties, i.e acting as defence lawyers for the imprisoned Kurdish leader, Abdullah Ocalan.

While the procedures used by the authorities leading up to the arrests, for example,  seizure of confidential and privileged documents including client files, unlawful and unwarranted phone tapping and intercepting of private correspondence including emails, violate internationally acknowledged standards in human rights law, we are concerned that the hearings themselves breach the various criteria to be complied with to ensure that trials are “fair”. The defendants have had very limited opportunities to challenge the prosecutor’s evidence which has appeared most speculative and flimsy, but when they have done, they have exposed the indictments as being more often in the realm of fantasy than of fact.

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Freedom of expression, KCK trials, Peace process, Political prisoners

Margaret Owen: Blogs from Istanbul during fifth KCK lawyers trial hearing

Margaret Owen OBE, along with barrister Melanie Gingell and solicitor Ali Has, has continued  her excellent work as international trial monitor at the latest hearing of the KCK trial of 46 Kurdish lawyers, which took place last Thursday. Below are a series of blog posts written by Margaret about the ongoing protests in Istanbul, and of course about the latest developments in the trial.

Tuesday June 18th. Istanbul. Midnight.

We arrived in Istanbul late tonight, half expecting to find armed police, and even the army, blocking roads from the airport to the city, but all was strangely quiet.

Our taxi driver surprised us by saying that the city centre and Taksim square were deserted, and that the BBC and foreign media had grossly exaggerated the protest movement. He was quite angry at our questions and told us that now the demonstrations were all over and everyone had gone home.

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Conflict resolution, Freedom of expression, KCK trials, Kurdish community, Peace process, Political prisoners

Turkey, peace talks and the PKK: Freedom and Justice for the Kurds

Panel Discussion

Friday, 28 June 2013, 6.30pm
Garden Court Chambers, 57-60 Lincoln’s Inn Fields, London WC2A (closest tube Holborn)

 

Chaired by Professor Bill Bowring, President of the European Lawyers for Democracy and Human Panel Rights (ELDH); International Secretary, Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers

Speakers include Gareth Peirce, human rights lawyer; Melanie Gingell, barrister Doughty Street Chambers; member of the Bar Human Rights Committee; Dr Ozlem Galip, researcher and lecturer, University of Oxford; Prof Dr Michael Gunter, Professor of Political Science, Tennessee Technological University, Secretary General of EU Turkey Civic Commission (EUTCC); Barry White, National Organiser of the Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom, member of European Federation of Journalists (EFJ)

Over recent months dramatic developments have been taking place in Turkey with the emergence of direct talks between representatives of the Turkish government and the imprisoned leader of the PKK, Abdullah Ocalan. The seminar will explore how a lasting peace can be secured now that a ceasefire has been followed by the start of a phased withdrawal of Kurdish guerrillas.

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Kurdish community, Kurdish Women, Peace process

We demand justice!

CENI – Kurdish Women’s Office for peace have released this statement on the anniversary of the assassinations in Paris of Sakine, Fidan and Leyla.

Also, the CENI Info news bulletin for June is available in English for the first time, bring you all the latest news from the Kurdish women’s movement in Kurdistan and the diaspora. You can download it here. 

We won’t rest until the murders of Sakine, Fidan and Leyla are completely solved:

 We demand justice!

On 9 January 2013, a terrible crime took place in central Paris. Three female Kurdish politicians and fighters for freedom and women rights, Sakine Cansız, Fidan Doğan and Leyla Şaylemez were gruesomely murdered with shots to the head. The Kurdish people, women and democratic forces around the world, are demanding a prompt and full investigation into the killings.

Continue reading “We demand justice!” →

Conflict resolution, Freedom of expression, Kurdish language rights, Kurdish Women

EP passes resolution on Turkey Progress Report

The European Parliament held a plenary debate yesterday to discuss a resolution on the 2012 Turkey Progress Report, published last autumn. Peace in Kurdistan has followed the process closely and provided a submission to the draft resolution, which you can read below.

The final resolution was adopted yesterday, and can be downloaded here.

 

PEACE IN KURDISTAN CAMPAIGN                                                                APRIL 2013

 

EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT: Motion for a resolution on the 2012 Progress Report on Turkey

 Presentation by Peace in Kurdistan campaign for discussion of the draft motion on the 2012 Progress Report on Turkey, to be discussed in the plenary of the European Parliament on 17 April 2013.

Continue reading “EP passes resolution on Turkey Progress Report” →

Political prisoners

Trade Union raids: KESK Statement

This is the text of a statement by our confederation KESK’s management board entitled ‘We will not be silent! We will resist! Repression cannot intimidate us!’.

The AKP’s “advanced democracy ” continues with a daily glut of arrests and imprisonment. But it has always been seen that this allegedly “advanced democracy” was built on hostility to labour and democracy, and like authoritarian and fascist regimes it detains and imprisons its opponents.

We have seen most recently that the AKP shows there is no part of the country where its empire of fear is not determined to cast its shadow. It is quickly dragging Turkey towards the image it has formed of a one-man dictatorship; its aim is to condemn the whole of society to deep silence by putting its opposition-democratic sections through the mangler. For this reason it sees no problem in using illegal imputations to detain and imprison everyone who raises their voice against its empire of fear, be they students, lawyers, trade unionists or journalists. In short, everyone who wants to live a decent life in a democratic country continues to be targeted.

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KCK trials, Political prisoners

Event: Lawyers on Trial in Turkey – Implications for Establishing Peace and Justice

Peace in Kurdistan Campaign supported by the Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers, European Lawyers for Democracy and Human Rights (ELDH) and CAMPACC

Public Meeting

“Lawyers on Trial in Turkey: Implications for Establishing Peace and Justice”

Thursday, 28 February, 6.30-8pm

Wilson Room, Portcullis House, Westminster, SW1

IMPORTANT Please try and arrive at 6pm to make sure you leave enough time to get through security

Hosted by Siobhain McDonagh MP

Speakers: Michael Mansfield QC, President of the Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers

Prof Bill Bowring, President of the European Lawyers for Democracy and Human Rights (ELDH)

Melanie Gingell, barrister Tooks Chambers and member of the Bar Human Rights Committee: observed hearings in Turkey on 6 November 2012 and 3 January 2013

Margaret Owen OBE, barrister and member of the Bar Human Rights Committee: observed hearings in Turkey on 16 July 2012 and 6 November 2012

Chaired by Ali Has, Solicitor Advocate

Continue reading “Event: Lawyers on Trial in Turkey – Implications for Establishing Peace and Justice” →