Journalist and asylum seeker Behrouz Boochani is detained indefinitely by the Australian government on Papua New Guinea's Manus Island. Credit: Aref Heidari.

By Andy Hazel
UNITED NATIONS, Dec 29 2016 (IPS)

Despite being locked up in an Australian detention centre on Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island, Kurdish-Iranian journalist Behrouz Boochani has continued reporting – gaining bylines and media attention around the world.

Journalism is the reason Boochani was forced to flee his home country of Iran, and – like the other 900 men detained indefinitely on Manus Island – seek refuge in Australia.

“When the Australian government exiled me to Manus Island I found out that they are basing their policy on secrecy and dishonesty,” Boochani told IPS.

“In my first days here I started to work to send out the voice of people in Manus. Why did I start? Because the Australian government’s policy of indefinite detention is against my principles and values, and against global human values.”

Boochani worked as a freelance writer in Iran and founded the magazine Werya, devoted to exploring Kurdish politics, culture and history. In February 2013 the offices of Werya were raided by the paramilitary agency the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, also known as Sepah, classified by the US government as a terrorist organisation.

Boochani was in a different city when 11 of his colleagues were arrested. The story he wrote about the raid on the website Iranian Reporters quickly went global and put him in the government’s sights and he fled.

Boochani spent his first two years in detention writing and publishing articles under a fake name, for fear of losing the mobile phone that has been his lifeline since arriving on Manus Island.

“We were not allowed to have phones until April this year,” he explains. “The guards twice searched my room looking for my phone. After two years of sending out my work in this way I felt that I had become part of Australian society and with the support of (international organisations) PEN International and Reporters Without Borders, I started to use my real name. I would never say that I’m not scared, but I say that fear is not powerful enough to stop me or prevent me from working on my mission. It’s my duty to document all of what happens here.”

What has been happening on Manus Island has attracted global condemnation. In May the UN Human Rights Council condemned the detention centre and Papua New Guinea affirmed that it would be shut down. Since then, the Australian government have declared the centre ‘open’, meaning that inmates can come and go freely though they cannot leave the island. Boochani and other detainees have spoken of being encouraged to accept residency in Papua New Guinea, despite attacks on detainees from both local residents and police forces. Returning to Iran, Boochani says, is not an option.

“The political situation in Iran does not change especially for Kurdish people. There are about 20 journalists still in prison there. In November, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution against the Iranian regime for violating human rights. Last year they hanged more than 1,000 people. How can I go back?”

Since arriving in Manus Island, Boochani has written for Australian and international newspapers and radio programs and co-directed the feature length documentary about life on Manus Island Chauka, Please Tell Us the Time. He has continued to write articles about Kurdish culture and politics for Kurdish media, published poetry and essays, contributed to two forthcoming books and completed his first novel, due in mid-2017.

One of the greatest challenges facing Boochani is what he calls “the refugee concept”, the willingness of Australian and international media to use his insight and words but to cast him as a “broken man” or a refugee.

“This is a big form of censorship,” he says. “I know that I am a refugee but I’m a journalist and writer too. I have been denied my identity as a journalist because of this refugee concept and most of the media don’t care about that. When I have found a subject for a story and provided information and documents to other journalists sometimes they have ignored me, or other times they published a story on the basis of my information but denied my identity by referring to me only as a refugee. I’m doing the same job as other journalists in Australia or anywhere else, but I am always called a refugee.”

Overcoming the international concept of Australia as a peaceful, law-abiding nation with a relaxed attitude to life also presents a difficulty to Boochani as a journalist. “We are being tortured by a western country and the media and human rights organisations find it hard to believe that a country like Australia is implementing policies that are the same in many ways as Iran or Saudi Arabia,” he says. “I am a prisoner like the others here. It’s hard to work in this situation. I have to endure prison and torture and at the same time work as a journalist or human rights defender.”

The Manus Island detention centre holds around 900 men, most of whom are refugees intercepted en route to Australia having fled conflicts in countries such as Sudan or Syria, or persecution as is the case with Rohingyas from Myanmar.

The detention centre is a key part of a multi-billion-dollar bilateral agreement between the Papua New Guinean and Australian governments. Condemnation of Australia’s offshore detention of asylum seekers has come from several branches of the United Nations including the High Commissioner for Human Rights, the Committee Against Torture, the High Commissioner for Refugees, the Special Rapporteur on torture and the Special Rapporteur on the human rights of migrants.

While identifying as a journalist and writer, Boochani is not motivated by profit.

“If I do work for money, I will lose my way. The important thing is to send out a voice from Manus and let people know the reality.”

“I am a journalist, I am a writer, I am a prisoner. The history of this prison is written in my hand … I am here with only a phone and my tongue and say:  I am more than you know. The Australian government made a mistake exiling a journalist to this prison and keeping him as hostage.  Writing is my mission, my work, it is me.”

Correction: An earlier version of this article said that the UN Human Rights Council had declared Manus Island Detention Centre illegal. The council condemned the centre, and in response the PNG government declared it illegal.

Pınar Selek, a Turkish sociologist who has on three occasions been tried and acquitted over a fatal explosion in Istanbul more than 14 years ago, is being taken to court again Jan. 24.

On Jul. 9, 1998, seven people were killed and more than 120 injured in an explosion at the historical Spice Bazaar in Istanbul. Selek was implicated as having organised the explosion.

Through the 1990s, Selek studied the armed conflict between the Turkish state and the separatist Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). At the height of the conflict, she conducted interviews with numerous PKK members, including its leader Abdullah Öcalan.

“At that time, no one could speak out about the Kurdish problem,” says Erol Katırcıoğlu, professor of economics at Marmara University in Istanbul. “Not only did Pinar Selek speak publicly, she also did research.”

Selek was detained two days after the incident, and following a brief police investigation was indicted on the grounds that she was a PKK member. Additional charges were later brought against her as a primary suspect in the explosion.

Shortly after the case was filed, Abdülmecit Öztürk, a suspect in the case, ‘confessed’ to involvement in the incident, stating he had “placed the bomb in the Spice Bazaar together with Pınar Selek.”

At a hearing on Dec. 22, 1998, however, Öztürk retracted his statement, claiming it was obtained through torture. He said he did not know Pınar Selek and had nothing to do with the explosion.

Three trials and nearly 15 years later, the verdict on Selek’s involvement in the explosion continues to be tossed between lower and higher courts in Turkey. The Supreme Court of Appeals has refused to acquit her.

Conflicting reports, inconsistent testimonies and lack of evidence have resulted in a protracted and highly disputed case. Initial police reports dated Jul. 13 and 14, 1998, said there were no indications of a bombing. A police report released a week later supported these findings.

Selek remained in police custody until December 2000, after three court-appointed forensic experts concluded that the explosion had in fact been caused by a gas leak and not a bomb.

And while court investigations largely support the case that a bomb was not the cause of the explosion, lack of evidence continues to plague proceedings.

“The critical thing in this case was that the firemen who arrived at the place of the incident cleared all the evidence away,” says Turkish court correspondent Bülent Ceyhan. “They did it after putting out the fire.”

However, the Council of Forensic Medicine reported evidence of material found on victims and at the scene which it said could have been used to make a bomb. This is the report that the Supreme Court has referred to each time it has reversed Selek’s acquittal.

In 2006, the Istanbul High Criminal Court determined that “no certain and believable evidence that requires punishment could be found.” Selek was acquitted of the charges against her and released. But this and subsequent acquittals in 2008 and 2011 were overruled by the Supreme Court of Appeals.

According to Ceyhan, there are many variables that have affected the case, from poor forensic and police procedure to the absence of the Chief Judge at the last hearing.

“The main judge, Vedat Yılmazabdurrahmanoğlu, who previously acquitted Pınar Selek, was away from the court (in December) because of health issues,” he notes. “When he was not there, the court cancelled its last decision to set Pınar Selek free.”

Yılmazabdurrahmanoğlu has since recovered and will be in court on Jan. 24.

As the trial approaches, both domestic and international human rights groups continue to condemn the Turkish judicial system’s treatment of Selek’s case. Last month PEN International, an organisation that promotes freedom of expression, said “Selek is being subjected to a campaign of judicial harassment as a means of penalising her for her longstanding support for and work on minority groups in Turkey.”

Other supporters of Selek’s innocence, including fellow scholars, have also voiced their discontent.

Peter Sluglett, president of the Middle East Studies Association of North America and professor at the National University of Singapore, appealed to Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to drop the charges against Selek in a letter issued by the Committee on Academic Freedom on Dec. 12, 2012.

“The ongoing prosecution of Selek sends a chilling message to the academic community and signifies an ongoing policy of violating the freedom of academic research in Turkey,” Sluglett said.

He also urged Erdoğan to “take note of mounting international condemnation of the erosion of democratic rights and freedoms in Turkey.”

As Turkey continues to pursue European Union membership, Katırcıoğlu says that the verdict may affect its chances of integration.

“If the verdict turns to be ‘guilty’, especially for people who want to see Turkey as a democratic country, they will not be satisfied,” he said. “Pinar Selek’s case is not only a case about a woman searching for justice, it is also a case which indicates a search for justice in a society.”

At a Kurdish class in Derik in northeast Syria. Credit: Karlos Zurutuza/IPS.

By Karlos Zurutuza
DERIK, Northern Syria, Sep 10 2012 (IPS)

“I want to learn how to read and write in my own language,” says Manal, a young Kurd from Syria. Neither she nor any of Manal’s 30 classmates have ever been so close to achieving their goal.

And it’s not that Manal doesn’t have an education: the 21-year-old explains in almost perfect English that she hopes to get her degree in economics next year at the university of Hasake, 600 kilometres northeast of Damascus. But until two months ago, she had never had a chance to write in her native Kurdish, banned for the nearly 50 years the Baath party has remained in power in Syria.

During this summer vacation, Manal has attended Kurdish language classes at the Badarhan academy in Derik, 700 kilometres northeast of Damascus. This is one of two language centres in town that have recently included Kurdish in their offers: three one-hour sessions a week, free. The teaching is funded by contributions from private individuals.

“I speak English, so I was already familiar with the Latin alphabet, also used for Kurdish,” Manal explains just before she walks into class.

At the end of the school day, headmaster Mohamed Amin Saadun briefs IPS on the background to this initiative. It’s just two months old in Derik but it has precedents in virtually every Syrian location under Kurdish control. Some opened almost from the very start of the uprising more than a year and a half ago.

“We had taught English and Turkish for years and we were aching to get the opportunity to include Kurdish language lessons, as well as history, poetry and culture of our people,” says Saadun, also a renowned writer and poet.

Mohamed Sadik gave two of his two back rooms to the school for free so that it could accommodate the rush of new students. “A lot of people have died for the Kurdish cause,” says Sadik amid the snap of the metal shutters closing behind him. “What I’ve done is nothing compared to that.”

Following the agreement signed last July between the main Kurdish political parties in Syria in Arbil – the administrative capital of the autonomous Kurdish region of Iraq – educational management in the region is controlled by the Democratic Union Party (PYD), the dominant coalition among the Syrian Kurds. Today, the education committee is working against the clock to include subjects like math and history in the academic year.

With the coming of the Baath Party to power in 1963, the Kurds of Syria – estimated to be between two and four million depending on the source – have been subjected to a systematic policy of Arabisation. But now Badarhan has 600 students learning Kurdish.

Theirs is an Indo-European language of five variants, two of them are dominant: Kurmanji spoken by the Kurds of Turkey and Syria and written in Latin script, and Sorani, used by most Kurds in Iraq and Iran and written in the Arabic alphabet. There is a standard for each of these two variants but still no common language and alphabet for the 40 million Kurds worldwide.

Manal shares her desk with Fatima, a nurse. “It is doubtless important for us, but especially for the future generations,” Fatima says. She recalls she was once expelled from school for a week for speaking Kurdish in class.

“We would speak it in secret, even with some of the teachers.”

Fatima today strives to write correctly in her native Kurmanji thanks to a photocopied grammar book but, above all, to the volunteer teachers such as the young tutor Hoshank.

“When I heard that they needed teachers I did not hesitate for a second,” he says.

“I learned how to write by myself, through the Internet and books I would keep hidden at home. Today I want to make things easier for others and to do something for my people.”

The colonial borders drawn in secret between Britain and France in 1916 over the Baghdad railway line divided the local Kurdish families into Turkey and Syria. The subsequent Treaty of Sevres (1920) considered the creation of an independent Kurdish state but the agreement was never fulfilled.

Since the Internet arrived, Damascus has enforced a severe veto over the main social networks and all sorts of websites the regime considers potentially dangerous. Such blockade has been worsened by the erratic Syrian telephone communications since the beginning of the war.

Most Syrian Kurds, however, benefit from almost barrier-free Internet access thanks to the Turkish network across the border that can be easily accessed. Albeit unintentionally, that would be the Turkish government’s contribution to a cohesion of the Kurdish people amid their cultural revolution.