BIA-Net Quarterly Human Rights Report: Mostly Bad News

BIA-Net recently released its quarterly monitoring report of human rights violations committed by the Turkish state.

From BIA-Net:

In Turkey, violations and pressures in the area of the freedom of expression have increased in the past three months. From caricature to literature, journalism to speech, every field of expression received its share of violations and pressures. The only consolation was the reduction of the compensation payments in the European Human Rights Court cases.

BİA Media Monitoring Desk’s Media Monitoring Report for April-May-June 2008 states that in these three months, 194 people had to face the judge for expressing opinions about the implementations and procedures of the state and protesting the human rights violations done by the state.

Of those tried in total of 88 cases, 79 were journalists. There were 132 people last year in the same period, 60 percent increase compared with this year’s figure.