Kurdish journalist Rabia Önver has become a target of the judiciary after a series of articles. The Hakkari (Colemêrg) public prosecutor’s office issued an arrest warrant and now has raised the accusation of “spreading disinformation”.
The ÖHD lawyers’ association said that this “initial suspicion” announced by the authorities on Monday, arose from the reporter’s writing on state involvement in prostitution and drug trafficking. The public prosecutor’s office also used this accusation to justify the police’s search carried out on Önver’s apartment. The measure was intended to “find documents and digital material,” it said.
The ÖHD section in Hakkari, which represents Önver legally, was outraged by the prosecutor’s statements, and said: “We condemn the accusations against our client as a blatant attempt at intimidation and see the authorities’ actions as an attack on freedom of the press and freedom of expression.” Freedom of the press and the public’s right to information are “barometers of the state of a democracy,” warned the association.
Efforts to silence the press through the hands of the judiciary show the democratic deficit in Turkey. “We call on the Hakkari public prosecutor’s office to immediately stop its investigations against Rabia Önver.”
The Kurdish journalist works as a correspondent for the women-run news agency JinNews. Her focus is on socio-political, particularly women’s and feminist issues. She recently published the results of her investigation into state-protected criminal networks in a three-part feature titled “Special War in Colemêrg.” After the third part of the series was published on Thursday, her home in Yüksekova (Gever) was searched on the orders of the Hakkari Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office. The journalist was not at home at the time of the raid and is being sought by the police.
Source: ANF News
