AKIN Press Release on Mr. Birdal

[ozgurluk at xs4all.nl]

For Immediate Release (#33)
May 12, 1998

Silencing Critics: Top Human Rights Activist Gunned Down in Turkey

Akin Birdal, the President of Turkey based Human Rights Association, was 
gunned down today.  At about noon, he was visited by two armed men who 
attacked him in his office.  He was shot on the chest and his legs.  Mr. 
Birdal was taken to Sevgi Hospital in Ankara and remains in critical 
condition.  The perpetuators were given their usual name, "actor unknown 
assailants."

Over 3.000 people have been murdered in Turkey since the early 1990s by 
the se so called actor unknown assailants.  An overwhelming majority of 
them are political activists, human rights workers, journalists, in 
short, Kurdish and Turkish intellectuals, who are urging Turkey to move 
in the direction of peace and democracy and embrace reconciliation and 
civil society.  For their good counsel, they have been targeted by the 
bullets of assassins.

Many in Turkey know that the military is behind these death squads.  Many 
in the West continue to accept, at least on the surface, the declarations 
that emanate from Ankara, "actor unknown assailants" have claimed these 
lives.  For the sake of trade and misguided old friendship, no one is 
raising a voice to urge the Turkish generals to move back from their 
deadly march into the abyss.

Last month, a Kurdish rebel leader surrendered to the Turkish military.  
Unseen, his alleged "confessions" leaked by the army have included names 
of a number of prominent individuals, including Akin Birdal, as the paid 
pipers of PKK.  Such a practice has a name in the annals of this country: 
McCarthyism; in Turkey, it is an ongoing sport, practiced by the faceless 
generals to silence the humanizing elements in the society.

Last January, Mr. Haluk Gerger, another human rights activist in Turkey 
held a Press Conference at the Human Rights Association in Ankara to tell 
the assembled crowd that he was on his way to Ayas Gudul Prison to serve 
his ten months prison term for an article he had written about PKK.  Mr. 
Akin Birdal, noting that irony of the situation, remarked that elsewhere. 
writers get in line to see plays or look at the works of art.  In Turkey, 
he said, they go to prison.

Today, these same forces wanted to send Mr. Akin Birdal to the grave.  We 
condemn the vile attack on Mr. Birdal and join his friends and his family 
in wishing him a quick recovery.



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American Kurdish Information Network (AKIN)
2623 Connecticut Avenue NW #1
Washington, DC 20008-1522

Tel: (202) 483-6444
Fax: (202) 483-6476
E-mail: akin at kurdish.org
Home Page: http://www.kurdistan.org
----

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-- 
Press Agency Ozgurluk
For justice, democracy and human rights in Turkey and Kurdistan!
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