Europe’s main security and human rights watchdog said on Monday that Turkey was blocking some 3,700 Internet sites for “arbitrary and political reasons” and urged reforms to show its commitment to freedom of expression.
Milos Haraszti, media freedom monitor for the 56-nation Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), said Turkey’s Internet law was failing to preserve free expression in the country and should be changed or abolished.
“Law 5651, commonly known as the Internet Law of Turkey, not only limits freedom of expression, but severely restricts citizens’ right to access information,” Haraszti said in a statement.
He said Turkey, a EU candidate, was barring access to 3,700 Internet sites, including YouTube, GeoCities and some Google pages, because Ankara’s Internet law was too broad and subject to political interests.
“Even as some of the content that is deemed ‘bad,’ such as child pornography, must be sanctioned, the law is unfit to achieve this. Instead, by blocking access to entire Web sites ... it paralyzes access to numerous modern file-sharing or social networks,” Haraszti said.
“Some of the official reasons to block the Internet are arbitrary and political, and therefore incompatible with OSCE’s freedom of expression commitments,” he said.
Asked about the OSCE remarks, a Turkish transport and communications ministry official who asked not to be named said: “Turkey provides unlimited and equal access for all parts of society. It is above the EU average on this issue.”
“The regulations over Internet have a dynamic structure and necessary legal changes are made when problems are detected in implementation,” the official said.
Haraszti said Turkish law was still failing to safeguard freedom of expression and numerous criminal code clauses were being used against journalists, who risked being sent to jail as a result.
Fears for press freedom in Turkey have risen following state attempts to collect a US$3.3 billion fine from major media group Dogan in a tax row, part of pressure on Dogan to obey a law limiting foreign ownership of Turkish firms.
In October, the European Commission’s annual report on Turkey’s progress toward EU membership urged Turkey to treat Dogan fairly and said Ankara needed to do more to protect freedom of expression and the press.
‘BARBAROUS ACTS’: The captain of the fishing vessel said that people in checkered clothes beat them with iron bars and that he fell unconscious for about an hour Ten Vietnamese fishers were violently robbed in the South China Sea, state media reported yesterday, with an official saying the attackers came from Chinese-flagged vessels. The men were reportedly beaten with iron bars and robbed of thousands of dollars of fish and equipment on Sunday off the Paracel Islands (Xisha Islands, 西沙群島), which Taiwan claims, as do Vietnam, China, Brunei, Malaysia and the Philippines. Vietnamese media did not identify the nationalities of the attackers, but Phung Ba Vuong, an official in central Quang Ngai province, told reporters: “They were Chinese, [the boats had] Chinese flags.” Four of the 10-man Vietnamese crew were rushed
STICKING TO DEFENSE: Despite the screening of videos in which they appeared, one of the defendants said they had no memory of the event A court trying a Frenchman charged with drugging his wife and enlisting dozens of strangers to rape her screened videos of the abuse to the public on Friday, to challenge several codefendants who denied knowing she was unconscious during their actions. The judge in the southern city of Avignon had nine videos and several photographs of the abuse of Gisele Pelicot shown in the courtroom and an adjoining public chamber, involving seven of the 50 men accused alongside her husband. Present in the courtroom herself, Gisele Pelicot looked at her telephone during the hour and a half of screenings, while her ex-husband
Scientists yesterday announced a milestone in neurobiological research with the mapping of the entire brain of an adult fruit fly, a feat that might provide insight into the brains of other organisms and even people. The research detailed more than 50 million connections between more than 139,000 neurons — brain nerve cells — in the insect, a species whose scientific name is Drosophila melanogaster and is often used in neurobiological studies. The research sought to decipher how brains are wired and the signals underlying healthy brain functions. It could also pave the way for mapping the brains of other species. “You might
PROTESTS: A crowd near Congress waved placards that read: ‘How can we have freedom without education?’ and: ‘No peace for the government’ Argentine President Javier Milei has made good on threats to veto proposed increases to university funding, with the measure made official early yesterday after a day of major student-led protests. Thousands of people joined the demonstration on Wednesday in defense of the country’s public university system — the second large-scale protest in six months on the issue. The law, which would have guaranteed funding for universities, was criticized by Milei, a self-professed “anarcho-capitalist” who came to power vowing to take a figurative chainsaw to public spending to tame chronically high inflation and eliminate the deficit. A huge crowd packed a square outside Congress
RSS