HDP visits Kurdish media in solidarity with arrested journalists

Pro-Kurdish People's Democratic Party (HDP) co-Chair Pervin Buldan said Mezopotamya news agency (MA) and JinNews journalists who have been arrested on terrorism charges were the “pens of honor.”

“Nothing can prevent the truth as long as there is a free press in this country,” Buldan said during a solidarity visit to the Kurdish media organizations whom a total of nine journalists from both were arrested last week, MA reported.

“If a country arrests its journalists, if a country introduces a ‘censorship’ law, you should know that there is a great deal of corruption and injustice in that country,” she said.

Following their detention on Oct.25 in a series of dawn raids carried out simultaneously in six provinces, nine journalists were arrested on Saturday on charges of being members of a terrorist organization.

“A country's democratization, a country's trust in law, a country's social peace is achieved by the evacuation of prisons,” Buldan said, urging the authorities to release the journalists.  

“There are thousands of people defending democracy and freedom in this country, just as there are tens of journalists in prisons. We demand the immediate release of those imprisoned unjustly and unlawfully, especially the journalists,” she said.

Mezopotamya Agency and JinNews frequently find themselves under investigation related to terrorism charges over the Kurdish issue. Turkish authorities accuse them of publishing news benefiting the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which is a “crime” punishable by several years in prison under Turkey’s anti-terror laws.