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Murder of Hrant Dink - the assassination of dialogue

19/01/2007

The International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) and its affiliates in Turkey, the Association for Human Rights in Turkey (IHD) and the Human Rights Foundation of Turkey (HRFT), the League for Human Rights (LDH) and the World Organization against Torture (OMCT) express their profound indignation after the cowardly assassination today in Istanbul of Hrant Dink, a Turkish journalist of Armenian origin and the editor of a bilingual Turkish-Armenian newspaper, Agos.

We firmly and unwaveringly condemn the murder of a person who first and foremost was one of the mainstays of the defence of human rights, a citizen entirely committed to the recent efforts in Turkey to accede to the European Union (UE) and for the democratization of Turkey. He was indeed the living incarnation of an outstretched hand and that of intercommunity dialogue to gradually reconcile the Turkish Republic with its past in terms of treatment of minorities.

We demand that the Turkish authorities actively search for the perpetrators and those behind the assassination. We remind them that words and deeds concerning minorities may lead to inciting this sort of tragedy.

By way of a reminder, on September 26th 2006, Mr. Hrant Dink was charged with "making disparaging comments about Turkish identity" after having called the massacre of Armenians in 1915 a "genocide".

Topics: Extrajudicial executions, Freedom of expression,