Like Father, Like Son - Arat Dink

[Aratta-Kingdom]

IN PRAISE OF ... ARAT DINK

 

The Guardian

Wednesday April 23 2008

 

Since it was introduced three years ago, article 301 of Turkey's

penal code, which makes insulting Turkishness a criminal offence, has

been used to bring charges against illustrious names in literature,

academia and journalism: Orhan Pamuk, the Nobel prize-winning author;

Noam Chomsky; the novelist Elif Safak; Hrant Dink, the Armenian-Turkish

journalist who was assassinated by radical nationalists; and last

year Hrant's son Arat. On Monday night Arat received the Guardian

Journalism Award from the campaigning group Index on Censorship. It

was not just to commemorate his father's work, but for his own brave

refusal to buckle under the censorship laws that led to his father's

death. Arat, executive director of Agos, an Armenian newspaper in

Istanbul, was brought to trial as a co-defendant, along with Serkis

Seropyan, holder of the weekly's publishing licence. Their crime

was to have republished an interview that Hrant gave to Reuters

in which he referred to the 1915 massacre of the Armenians in the

Ottoman empire as genocide. Arat was convicted as charged and given a

one-year suspended sentence. The Agos staff continue to be threatened

by extreme nationalists but remain determined in the face of bigotry

and physical threat. Arat Dink believes both Turks and Armenians are

postponing a common historical reckoning and looks forward to the day

when both peoples can commemorate the events in 1915 as a common part

of their history, without threatening each other's identity. Like

father, like son.

[Ashot]

very good!!! Edited April 28, 2008 by Ashot

[Aratta-Kingdom]

let that be a lesson for those who want to excersice censorship. those who refuse to be silenced, will never negotiate the truth.