News Center - Yesterday, 22 people, who were taken into custody in Diyarbakır province on June 8 as part of an investigation launched by the Diyarbakır Chief Public Prosecutor's Office, were transferred to the Diyarbakır Courthouse.

16 journalists sent to prison

16 journalists out of detained 22 people have been jailed by the Court of Peace on duty. The names of jailed journalists are: JINNEWS director Safiye Alagaş, Dicle Fırat Journalists Association (DFG) Co-chair Serdar Altan, Mesopotamia News Agency (MA) editor Aziz Oruç, Xwebûn Editor-in-Chief Mehmet Ali Ertaş, Zeynel Abidin Bulut, Ömer Çelik, Mazlum Doğan Güler, İbrahim Koyuncu, Neşe Toprak, Elif Üngür, Abdurrahman Öncü, Suat Doğuhan, Remziye Temel, Ramazan Delayed, Lezgin Akdeniz and Mehmet Şahin.

Journalists Esmer Tunç, Mehmet Yalçın, Kadir Bayram, Feynaz Koçuk and İhsan Ergülen have been released under judicial control.

Protest after the court rule

The journalists and relatives of jailed journalists protested the court rule by shouting slogans such as “Free press cannot be silenced”, “We will win by resisting” and “Bexwedan jiyan e”.

Making a statement in front of the courthouse, Dicle Müftüoğlu, co-chair of the DFG, said, “All the methods you've used since the '90s to silence the free press have failed. You will not succeed in silencing the free press with these operations either. You will not be able to deprive our colleagues of their freedom with copy-paste decisions. As we did not accept this decision, we will continue to hold protests until our colleagues are released.”

Protest at 1pm

Dicle Müftüoğlu added that they will protest the decision in front of the DFG at 1pm today and called for “everyone who supports freedom of the press to join the protest.”