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in wake of paris
Turkey's Post-Coup Crackdown Puts Human Rights on the Chopping Block
Turkey imposes three-month state of emergency and temporarily suspends European Convention on Human Rights in latest move after failed uprising
Jul 21, 2016
Turkey has imposed a three-month state of emergency and temporarily suspended the European Convention on Human Rights as the government continues to crack down on dissent in the wake of last week's failed military coup.
Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus said Turkey would follow France's lead on responding to issues of national security. The suspension was announced Thursday amid escalating concerns that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan would try to use the uprising to curtail civil liberties and human rights.
The state of emergency allows the president and the cabinet to rule largely by decree, bypassing Parliament to restrict or block freedoms as they deem necessary. That may include imposing curfews, conducting unwarranted searches, banning gatherings or protests, or restricting media.
As the BBC's Turkey correspondent Mark Lowen explains:
The government insists it will not affect the daily life of citizens and that the state of emergency will only root out the "virus" behind the coup. It points out that similar measures are in France since the Paris attacks last November.
[....] But given the criticism of the president for curbing both while in office, doubts persist over how an increasingly authoritarian leader will use this, especially given the recent purges.
In a televised address on Wednesday, Erdogan said he "would like to underline that the declaration of the state of emergency has the sole purpose of taking the necessary measures, in the face of the terrorist threat that our country is facing."
The "virus in the military will be cleansed," he said, referring to alleged supporters of U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gulen, a prominent government critic whom Erdogan has blamed for the coup. Gulen has denied involvement.
About 250 people were killed and hundreds were wounded last week when troops shut down the Bosphorus Bridge in Istanbul and deployed military planes to key government buildings in Ankara. Soldiers who took part in the coup attempt later told interrogators they had been told by commanding officers it was a military exercise.
Tens of thousands of people have been arrested or fired since the coup attempt, including soldiers, teachers, judges, government personnel, and high-ranking military officials. More than 600 schools have been closed and national authorities have promised to set up "a special court for trying coup plotters" as well as "a special prison" for those convicted.
Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag said the state of emergency was a targeted effort to prevent another coup, but the announcement follows warnings from observers that Turkey's response to the uprising will be a test of its commitment to human rights.
"While the government has the complete right to hold to account those involved in the coup, the speed and scale of the arrests, including of top judges, suggests a purge rather than a process based on any evidence," said Hugh Williamson, Europe and Central Asia director at Human Rights Watch, in a statement earlier this week. "Turkey's citizens who took to the streets to defend democracy deserve a response that upholds the rule of law and protects media freedom."
As the Independent noted, "There have been concerns in Turkey that the move will see a return to the days of martial law after a 1980 military coup, or the height of a Kurdish insurgency in the 1990s."
Erdogan also said Thursday that "Europe does not have the right to criticize this decision."
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A Mass Murderer Becomes a 'Terrorist'-Based on Ethnicity, Not Evidence
The New York Times (7/15/16), writing about the man who reportedly killed 84 people in a truck attack in Nice, France, provided no evidence that Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel was motivated by either politics or religion to commit violence--yet still labeled the murders as "terrorism," as though the definition of that crime were based on ethnicity rather than motivation.
Jul 17, 2016
The New York Times (7/15/16), writing about the man who reportedly killed 84 people in a truck attack in Nice, France, provided no evidence that Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel was motivated by either politics or religion to commit violence--yet still labeled the murders as "terrorism," as though the definition of that crime were based on ethnicity rather than motivation.
Times correspondent Andrew Higgins wrote that Lahouaiej Bouhlel
was known to his neighbors only as a moody and aggressive oddball. He never went to the local mosque, often grunted in response to greetings of "bonjour" and sometimes beat his wife -- until she threw him out....
Mr. Lahouaiej Bouhlel appeared not to have left behind any public declaration of his motive or indicated any allegiance to the Islamic State or another extremist group....
Residents in his former apartment building on a hill overlooking the city said they had never seen him at the local mosque and never heard him mention religion.
Indeed, they said he rarely spoke at all and seemed to be in a permanent haze of anger, particularly after his marriage fell apart.
The militant group ISIS issued a statement praising the attack, but as the Times story reported,
it remained unclear whether the claim of support was an effort by the Islamic State, also know as ISIS or ISIL, to associate itself with a high-profile attack without having been involved in its planning or having any direct contact with Mr. Lahouaiej Bouhlel.
Despite the absence of any evidence of a political motivation, or indeed any motive at all--generally considered to be a key part of any definition of terrorism--the Times story still referred to the Nice killings as "the third large-scale act of terrorism in France in a year and a half." The killings, Higgins wrote, "raised new questions throughout the world about the ability of extremists to sow terror."
Why is the Times willing to label the Nice deaths "terrorism"--a label that US media do not apply to all acts of mass violence, even ones that have much clearer political motives (FAIR Media Advisory, 4/15/14)? In part, they seem to be following the lead of French authorities: "French officials labeled the attack terrorism and cast the episode as the latest in a series that have made France a battlefield in the violent clash between Islamic extremists and the West."
But quotes from French officials made it clear that such claims were little more than guesswork: The story reported that Prime Minister Manuel Valls "said the attacker in all likelihood had ties to radical Islamist circles," citing Valls' statement to French TV: "He is a terrorist probably linked to radical Islam one way or another." Later Valls is quoted noting that the attack happened on the French national holiday of Bastille Day:
Why on the 14th of July? Because it is a celebration of freedom. It was, therefore, indeed to affect France that the individual committed this terrorist attack.
French Interior Minister, Bernard Cazeneuve, "was more cautious," the Times reported: "We have an individual who was not at all known by the intelligence services for activities linked to radical Islamism," Cazeneuve was quoted.
Why was the Times not similarly cautious about applying the label of "terrorism" to an act whose motives it admitted knowing nothing about? It's hard to escape the conclusion that the Times believes that when the suspect is an Arab--Lahouaiej Bouhlel was a Tunisian immigrant--then allegations of terrorism require no evidence whatsoever.
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At Least 84 Dead as France Reels from Attack in Nice
At least 84 have been killed, another 50 seriously injured, and many others hurt after truck hits crowd
Jul 15, 2016
Scores of people were killed in Nice, France late Thursday night when a truck rammed into a crowd that had gathered for Bastille Day, in what officials say was a deliberate attack.
At least 84 have been killed, another 50 seriously injured, and many others hurt.
The Guardian is providing live updates here.
The truck slammed into the crowd shortly after a fireworks display celebrating the French national holiday ended around 11pm in the southern coastal city, reportedly swerving and zigzagging for two kilometers (1.24 miles) in an apparent attempt to hit more people.
According to the local paper Nice Matin, the driver also fired on the crowd while ramming through it. He was eventually shot dead by police, who searched the truck and found it was loaded with ammunition and grenades.
The attack has not been claimed by any group or organization.
Reuters reports on the driver's identity:
An attacker who drove a heavy truck into crowds in the French city of Nice killing at least 84 people came from the Tunisian town of Msaken which he last visited four years ago, Tunisian security sources said on Friday.
The man, identified by French police sources as 31-year-old Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, was not known by the Tunisian authorities to hold radical or Islamist views, the sources said.
Bouhlel was married with three children, they said. The sources did not say when he had last been resident in Tunisia.
It is the latest in a string of attacks to hit France in recent months. Around the world, people gathered to express their sympathy and solidarity, holding vigils and placing flowers in front of their French embassies. U.S. President Barack Obama said he condemned the attack "in the strongest terms."
French President Francois Hollande declared three national days of mourning and extended the country's state of emergency--still in place since November's attack on the headquarters of satirical French magazine Charlie Hebdo--by another three months. He also said France was "tightening up its borders" and that military officials would deploy another 10,000 army reservists to patrol the streets of France, while "activities will be strengthened" in Iraq and Syria.
The controversial state of emergency allows police to conduct unwarranted house raids and empowers officials to place individuals under house arrest.
That response received some guarded criticism from journalists and security experts who pointed to the futility of the so-called "War on Terror."
As Zoe Chapman noted at Just Security on Friday:
The lorry attack comes just as the French government was preparing to relax the state of emergency. If it transpires it was a terror attack, it would represent a breakdown of the "vast security dragnet" France erected following November's Islamic State-sponsored mass killings.
And Simon Jenkins wrote for the Guardian:
Such responses may comfort the citizens of Nice in their state of shock. But there is no defense force on Earth that can defend a crowd from a madman in a truck.
[....] Hollande might more usefully have called up 10,000 psychologists or 10,000 Islamic historians. As for strengthening France's role in the Islamist civil wars in Iraq and Syria, it is hard to imagine anything more likely to incite other young men to suicide attacks.
The Guardian's Paris correspondent Angelique Chrisafis adds that the attack "constitutes a crisis for Hollande's premiership."
"What has happened in France is tragic and calls for human sympathy," Jenkins concluded. "Beyond that, there is nothing we can usefully do--other than make matters worse."
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