EU-Terror Campaign against Revolutionaries and Anti-Imperialists from Turkey & Europe

international | eu | press release

Saturday April 03, 2004 17:55

by DHKC Information Bureau

Brussels, April 2, 2004

At exactly 5 in the morning on April 1, several dozen
police from the Belgian anti-terrorism units broke
into the DHKC Brussels Information Bureau.

Hooded and armed to the teeth, police had first sealed
off the district, then they broke open the door, laid
siege to all the rooms in the building, made the
bureau's occupants lie face down on the floor and
handcuffed them, and threatened them by pointing
automatic weapons at the nape of their necks.

Then they pillaged the bureau, confiscating computer
equipment, diskettes, CDs, video cassettes, mobile
telephones, cameras, books magazines and personal
diaries.

During this spectacular commando operation, the police
even went as far as digging up the garden hoping to
find some explosives but in reality all they found
were... kidney beans, tomatoes, onion shoots and
flower seeds.

This ridiculous operation was really aimed at the
office of Halkin Sesi TV (Voice of the People), a TV
channel broadcast by internet and whose office is on
the top floor of the same building.

The crime committed by this TV channel was to have
broadcast news of actions carried out by fighting
units of the DHKC claimed by telephone from Italy.

So a left-wing TV channel is criminalised merely for
broadcasting information.

Consequently, this terrorist operation by the Belgian
police is a flagrant attack on freedom of expression,
as is shown by the type of material seized.

We learned later that this operation was orchestrated
by Digos (the Italian security services) following a
search in Perugia (Umbria) in which supposedly two
DHKP-C militants were questioned as well as three
militants of the Anti-Imperialist Camp, and that this
operation was coordinated in six countries (Germany,
Netherlands, Italy, Greece, Turkey, Belgium) and that
more than 60 people had been detained.

At present, several dozen members of the association
for the families of prisoners TAYAD, journalists on
the weekly magazine Ekmek ve Adalet (Bread and
Justice) and the radio Anadolu'nun Sesi (Voice of
Anatolia), activists at the Idil Culture Centre (where
the well-known music group Grup Yorum), lawyers at the
progressive lawyers' office People's Law Bureau, and
members of the Association for Fundamental Rights and
Freedoms (Temel Haklar) are being tortured by the
Turkish police with the complicity of their European
counterparts.

At a time when European states are raising tension and
psychosis on the matter of terrorism, this police
operation attacking the politically motivated sets a
serious precedent which concerns all democrats and
progressive people in Belgium and Europe. In fact
nobody is safe today if politically motivated people
and journalists are the subject of this kind of
repression.

Also we appeal for solidarity with the members of the
DHKC Bureau and democrats from Turkey, whose principal
activity in Belgium is to denounce the crimes
committed by the torture regime in Turkey.

Do not hesitate to pay us a visit and to send us
messages of solidarity.

No to censorship!

Denouncing the terrorism of the imperialist states and
the torture regime in Turkey is both a right and a
duty!

Let us defend our right to freedom of expression and
freedom of belief!

Freedom for the militants of the Anti-Imperialist Camp
and the DHKC!

Address of the DHKC Information Bureau: 190, rue
Stevin, 1000 Brussels (near the Schuman roundabout.