(WiPC/IFEX) – The following is a WiPC press release on its activities marking Women’s Day: International PEN Celebrates the Achievements of Women Writers Working Under Threat Women’s Day 8 March 2002 On 28 January 2002, Ayse Nur Zarakolu, one of Turkey’s most well-known fighters for free expression, died. For twenty-five years, she and her husband, […]
(WiPC/IFEX) – The following is a WiPC press release on its activities marking Women’s Day:
International PEN Celebrates the Achievements of Women Writers Working Under Threat
Women’s Day 8 March 2002
On 28 January 2002, Ayse Nur Zarakolu, one of Turkey’s most well-known fighters for free expression, died. For twenty-five years, she and her husband, Ragip, had waged a tireless campaign against the suppression of free speech in Turkey, publishing books on human rights abuses against the Kurds and studies of the early 20th century’s genocide against the Armenians. As a result, Ayse Nur Zarakolu had innumerable court cases brought against her, served several prison terms and lived under constant state harassment. She will be remembered as one of the most remarkable and courageous women in the struggle for free speech.
Zarakolu saw her role as publisher as “giving writers all the opportunities they need to express their thoughts. And if the cost of doing this is imprisonment, then so be it.” Today, among PEN’s records of over 700 writers under attack world wide, there are 67 other women who are continuing in Zarakolu’s footsteps. All are remarkable for their courage and persistence. International PEN is marking 8 March, Women’s Day, to celebrate these women writers’ achievements in the face of extraordinary odds. It is focusing on three such women: Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, whose reporting on Russian atrocities in Chechnya has led her to be threatened, arrested and briefly exiled; Sehim Ben Sedrine, editor of an internet magazine in Tunisia, whose comments on judicial independence led to her imprisonment; and the Guatemalan historian Matilde Leonor González Izas, who was forced into hiding after she published material on military involvement in rural mob violence.
Turkey: Ayse Nur Zarakolu – In Memoriam
Ayse Nur Zarakolu, one of Turkey’s most well known and active campaigners for the right to free speech, died in hospital in Istanbul on Monday 28 January. She had been suffering from cancer.
For 25 years, Zarakolu, age 56, struggled for the right of the voices of the Kurdish and other minorities in Turkey to be heard, despite the threat to her own liberty. In 1977, she set up the Belge Publishing House, which described itself as aiming to “strike down taboos” and “investigate the rights of minorities.” As such, it published books tackling such controversial subjects as attacks against the Kurdish minority, a history of anti-Semitism in Turkey and the tense relations between Turkey and Greece. One of the books that led to a two-year prison term for Zarakolu in 1994 was a study of whether the 1915 Armenian massacre was a planned genocide. Zarakolu served several prison terms in 1982, 1984, 1994 and 1996. In 1994, on hearing of the two-year sentence against her, Zarakolu told the court, “So, today in Turkey, this is what ‘democratisation’ amounts to! ? After me, there are at least 10 other publishers who will soon be put behind iron bars. But they must go on doing their job, even if the government impedes them. That is, giving writers all
the opportunities they need to express their thoughts. And if the cost of doing this is imprisonment, then so be it.”
Throughout the late 90s to date, the Belge Publishing House continued publishing controversial titles, many of which led to Zarakolu being brought before the courts. Even after the publishing house was bombed in 1995, it kept going, run from a basement in Istanbul. In 1997, Zarakolu had over 20 court cases pending against her. The trials mostly ended in acquittals or fines, although the threat of imprisonment was ever present. The trials must have come with heavy psychological, physical and financial burdens. Only three weeks before her death, Zarakolu was informed that another hearing against her would start on 21 March. Her crime? Publishing a book by Huseyin Turhali, The Song of Freedom. The author, a Kurdish lawyer and politician now living in France,
fled Turkey for Syria after receiving death threats some years ago, only to be held for a year in a Syrian prison. Even though she was in severely poor health, Zarakolu remained a champion for free speech to the end.
Russia/Chechnya: Anna Politkovskaya
“A living hell … another world, some dreadful Hades you reach through the Looking Glass,” this is how Russian investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya describes the Chechnya that she has been reporting on for the last three years. It is a territory where respect for human rights is non-existent, where thousands of lives have been lost, mass graves have been uncovered and innocent civilians risk being shot at random. Politkovskaya’s dispatches, collected and published in 2000 in her book, A Dirty War: A Russian Reporter in Chechnya, make harrowing reading.
In February 2001, Politkovskaya was briefly arrested by Russian soldiers while reporting on allegations of torture of Chechens in custody. She said that she was threatened with rape and execution before being charged with infringing press laws and ordered out of Chechnya. In Moscow, she received information from a military friend that if she returned to Chechnya, her life would be at severe risk. Despite this, she returned to Chechnya in September, honouring a promise to a boy there who had suffered burns that she would bring him money for his treatment. During this visit, she met with the head of a federal commission who acknowledged that there had been problems within the military. An hour later, the helicopter in which he was travelling exploded. She reported on the incident, questioning the official explanation that a Chechen fighter had shot the aircraft down. On her return to Moscow, she was informed by her editor that the contents of her report were already known to the Ministry of Defence, although the report had yet to be published, and that, although there was some foundation to her conclusions, it should not be published. Furthermore, death threats had been issued that made it unsafe for her to remain in Moscow, and the editor ordered that she leave the country. This she did reluctantly, leaving behind her two children. She stayed in Vienna until her return to Russia earlier this year and has visited Chechnya on at least one occasion since.
Appeals calling on the Russian authorities to investigate the threats against Anna Politkovskaya and to bring those responsible to prosecution may be sent to:
His Excellency Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin
President
The Federation of Russia, The Kremlin
Moscow, Russia
Fax: + 70 95 206 5173
Tunisia: Sihem Ben Sedrine
Sihem Ben Sedrine, a Tunisian human rights activist and editor of the web-zine Kalima, today awaits trial on charges of “defamation” and “spreading false news with the aim of disturbing public order”, for which she could get a three-year prison term.
Ben Sedrine is well known for her opposition activities during the past two decades. She is secretary-general of the Observatory for the Defence of Freedom of the Press, Publishing and Creation, and spokesperson for the National Council for Liberties in Tunisia. She set up Kalima as a means of circumventing strict laws that restrict the sale of unauthorised newspapers. The on-line magazine provides stories on civil liberties and censorship; topics that are a far cry from those carried in the state-sponsored press.
Always under scrutiny, Ben Sedrine’s situation became more precarious in April 2000 when she was briefly arrested and badly beaten by police when attempting to visit another dissident journalist, Taoufik Ben Brik, who was then on hunger strike. That December, although her house was under 24-hour police surveillance, her car was broken into. Nothing was taken, but the attackers left a knife and a threatening note on the back seat.
In June 2001, Ben Sedrine went on a two-week tour of Europe visiting various Tunisian human rights activists. In London, she gave an interview for the programme “Le Grand Maghreb”, aired on Al-Mustakillah TV. In it she stated that there was no judicial independence in Tunisia, citing one particular judge. On 26 June, she was arrested upon her return and sent to Manouba women’s prison. She endured her short stay there with good humour, writing of her fellow inmates, “The young women who make up three-quarters of the cell’s occupants let their joie de vivre burst out as soon as the sound of music emanates from our insipid national television channel. But despondence is soon on equal terms with this instinct for life – arguments break out punctuated by laments for broken lives.” She adds, “Dear friends, contrary to rumour, I do not like prison. I would like to leave as soon as possible in spite of the cachet it might seem to bestow on me ?” She was freed on bail in August 2001, and is banned from travel.
Appeals calling for the dropping of charges and the travel ban against Sihem Ben Sedrine may be sent to:
His Excellency Président M. Zine El Abidine Ben Ali
Président de la République
Palais Présidentiel
Tunis, Tunisia
Fax: +216 1 744 721
Guatemala: Matilde Leonor González Izas
Matilde Leonor González Izas, a historian working for the Asociación para el Avance de las Ciencias Sociales (AVANSCO), Investigation Centre for the Advancement of Social Sciences, has been forced into hiding for publishing her findings linking the military to acts of mob violence in rural areas.
In late 2001, González Izas published her research on new mechanisms employed by the military to maintain local power in the department of El Quiche. Her work revealed apparent involvement of the military in rural mob violence and lynchings. During the civil war that spanned nearly 40 years until the peace accords of 1996, the military formed paramilitary groups to fight insurgency in rural areas. Some of these groups have been reluctant to relinquish the power they enjoyed during the civil war and González Izas’ research implies that there remains complicity between them and the military.
González Izas is no stranger to controversy and has lived under numerous threats since 1998, but in October 2001 this reached a crisis point when her house was broken into and her computer files were stolen. Over the following days, strangers were seen watching her house, and her car was followed. On 9 October, as she was driving, González Izas found herself surrounded by seven other cars forcing her from her route. Fortunately, she was able to attract the attention of a colleague on the street whom she asked to get into her car with her and her pursuers drove away. González Izas has since gone into hiding but reports that she still receives threatening calls.
González Izas’ case has disturbing similarities to that of Myrna Mack, an anthropologist who also worked for AVANSCO and who was murdered in September 1990 after reporting that the military had targeted civilian populations during the armed conflict.
Appeals calling for an investigation into the threats against Matilde Leonora González Izas may be sent to:
President S. e. Alfonso Portillo
Presidente de la República de Guatemala
Palacio Nacional
Guatemala, Guatemala
Fax: +502 221 4537 or 334 1615 or 230 1508
E-mail: secgralp@infovia.com.gt