Daphne vigil 16 October 2019 Photo: Simon Robinson
Last Wednesday I was at a moving, powerful vigil for murdered Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia. Many people spoke about Daphne’s life and read from her work. She had been a consistent campaigner against corruption and collusion throughout her working life, decades in which she and her family withstood a sustained campaign of villification, isolation, intimidation, and blatant threat (both legal and physical), before she was killed by a car bomb in October 2017. Her lawyers say that her death was entirely predictable and preventable, having followed persistent and escalating intimidation. Many Freedom of Expression organisations, including PEN International, Article 19 and Reporters Without Borders, are campaigning for justice for Daphne; they have called for a fully independent, thorough investigation into her murder since it happened.
Nurcan Baysal
At that vigil, I stood beside Nurcan Baysal, who was named Global Laureate of the 2018 Front Line Defenders award for Human Rights Defenders at Risk and is currently on a residency with English PEN. She is at risk because of her work as a writer and journalist, documenting human rights abuses in Turkey. She has been accused of supporting terrorism because she reports instances of abuse against the Kurdish population in Turkey and in Syria, but she also reports PKK transgressions: she is against violence and war, tout court. Listening to what people said about Daphne Caruana Galizia at her vigil, I was struck by the extraordinary commitment and dedication shown by people like her, people like Nurcan Baysal, who has been arrested and imprisoned more than once, but who has so far been acquitted of all charges against her. Like Daphne, she experiences official harassment and all kinds of more random abuse on social media. Her friends are either in prison or in exile. What gives such courageous, principled people the strength to carry on in the face of so much antagonism, hostility, isolation and danger?
Three days after that vigil, Nurcan’s home in Diyarbakir was raided early in the morning by, she says, 30-40 armed police. She is safe because she is not there at the moment but expects to be arrested on her return. And, she says, her kids were terrified by the scale of the raid. She goes on to say: Those who demand peace and human rights are silenced and brutally oppressed in Turkey. I am just one of them, thousands of others are currently in prison. Your indifference is killing us. Please do raise your voice and stand in solidarity with our struggle before it’s too late.
A statement by Daniel Gorman, Director of English PEN says that English PEN condemns the raid on the house of courageous journalist Nurcan Baysal by Turkish Security Forces. This raid comes as part of an ongoing assault by the authorities on a free media in Turkey, still the world’s biggest jailer of journalists. We call on the Turkish government to respect international conventions on freedom of expression and to support a free and independent media. [Here]
Please read Nurcan’s own powerful article, “I have a debt to Uncle Adnan’s children and all other Kurdish orphans” on Ahval
She also has an essay in the recent publication by Front Line Defenders and Fighting Words of Yes, We Still Drink Coffee!, an anthology of essays and artwork by and about Human Rights Defenders, curated and edited by Orla Lehane, which will have its Dublin launch in November at the Dublin Book Festival.
Libran Writer (Lia Mills) 