Listen To The Banned

Raids in Kurdistan

Turkish anti-PKK op nets dozens

Turkish police have detained more than 30 people, including several mayors of Kurdish-majority towns, in an operation against alleged Kurdish separatists.

The raids, conducted in 11 provinces, targeted two outlawed organisations - the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) and the Democratic Society Party (DTP).

The DTP was banned by Turkey's highest court two weeks ago. It was accused of links with PKK militants.

The PKK has been fighting for 25 years to create a separate Kurdish homeland.

The ban on the DTP sparked protests across south-east Turkey and was opposed by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who had initiated a programme to improve Kurdish rights.

The DTP was the only Kurdish party represented in parliament. It was the latest of 10 pro-Kurdish parties to be closed down by the Turkish authorities.

The EU, which Turkey hopes to join, has expressed concern at the ruling.

Some 40,000 people have died since the PKK launched its armed campaign in the mainly Kurdish south-east. It is listed as a terrorist organisation by Turkey, the EU and the US.

Kurds make up about 20% of Turkey's population of more than 70 million.

The BBC's Jonathan Head in Istanbul says prosecutors are closing down the already limited opportunities for dialogue between the state and its largest minority.

Thursday's operation was the fifth this year. Fifty-two Kurdish activists are still being held after similar raids eight months ago - and all have been charged with membership of the PKK.

The dissolution of the DTP left the government without a negotiating partner for its peace plan, our correspondent says.

The party's MPs have now decided to retain their seats in parliament - but most of them have similar charges hanging over them. Only parliamentary immunity has protected them from arrest, Jonathan Head reports.

Uighurs Are Not Chinese

The Chinese Gov prohibits the use of this flag - afraid of something?

Clearly Chinese, as you can see.

Q&A: China and the Uighurs

The latest unrest in China's western Xinjiang region follows a long history of discord between China's authorities and the Uighur minority.

Who are the Uighurs?

The Uighurs are Muslims. Their language is related to Turkish and they regard themselves as culturally and ethnically close to other Central Asian nations.

The region's economy has for centuries revolved around agriculture and trade, with towns such as Kashgar thriving as hubs along the Silk Road.

In the early part of the 20th Century, the Uighurs briefly declared independence. The region was brought under the complete control of communist China in 1949.

Officially, Xinjiang is now described by China as an autonomous region, like Tibet to its south.

What are China's concerns about the Uighurs?

Beijing says Uighur militants have been waging a violent campaign for an independent state by plotting bombings, sabotage and civic unrest.

Since the 9/11 attacks in the US, China has increasingly portrayed its Uighur separatists as auxiliaries of al-Qaeda.

It has accused them of receiving training and indoctrination from Islamist militants in neighbouring Afghanistan.

However, little public evidence has been produced in support of these claims.

More than 20 Uighurs were captured by the US military after its invasion of Afghanistan. Though imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay for six years, they were not charged with any offence. Albania accepted five in 2006, four were allowed to resettle in Bermuda in June, 2009, while the Pacific island nation of Palau has agreed to take the others.

What complaints have been made against the Chinese in Xinjiang?

Activists say the Uighurs' religious, commercial and cultural activities have been gradually curtailed by the Chinese state.

China is accused of intensifying its crackdown on the Uighurs after street protests in the 1990s - and again, in the run-up to the Beijing Olympics.

Over the past decade, many prominent Uighurs have been imprisoned or have sought asylum abroad after being accused of terrorism.

China is said to have exaggerated the threat from Uighur separatists in order to justify repression in the region.

Beijing has also been accused of seeking to dilute Uighur influence by arranging the mass immigration of Han Chinese, the country's majority ethnic group, to Xinjiang.

Han Chinese currently account for roughly 40% of Xinjiang's population, while about 45% are Uighurs.

What is the current situation in Xinjiang?

Over the past decade, major development projects have brought prosperity to Xinjiang's big cities.

The activities of local and foreign journalists in the region are closely monitored by the Chinese state and there are few independent sources of news from the region.

China has been keen to highlight improvements made to the region's economy while Uighurs interviewed by the press have avoided criticising Beijing.

However, occasional attacks on Chinese targets suggest Uighur separatism remains a potent - and potentially violent - force.

A protest in July in Urumqi, the region's capital, turned violent, with about 140 people killed and hundreds injured.

Authorities blamed Xinjiang separatists based outside China for the unrest, while Uighur exiles said police had fired indiscriminately on a peaceful protest calling for an investigation into the deaths of two Uighurs in clashes with Han Chinese at a factory in southern China.

General Hok Lundy (RIP)

Cambodia's notorious and brutal police chief, he was widely feared

General Hok Lundy, Cambodia's notorious police chief and close ally of prime minister Hun Sen, has died at the age of 58 in a helicopter crash. He was travelling from the capital, Phnom Penh, to the south-eastern province of Svay Rieng. None of the helicopter's other occupants - General Sok Saem, deputy commander of the Cambodian infantry, the pilot and co-pilot - survived the crash.

A four-star general and member of the politburo of the ruling CPP (Cambodian People's party), Hok Lundy was a man who inspired fear not only in opposition ranks, but also in members of his own party. Born in Svay Rieng, he first rose to prominence as the governor of Phnom Penh in 1990. Four years later, Hun Sen appointed him national police chief, reporting directly to the prime minister. He never took orders from Sar Kheng, his nominal boss as minister for the interior.

In the aftermath of a bloody power struggle in 1997 between partners in the coalition government, many royalist generals were captured and killed in cold blood. Hok Lundy played a key part in these mopping-up operations and extrajudicial executions. A Funcinpec (royalist) party minister, Ho Sok, was detained at the interior ministry and shot dead by a police unit there. It is known that Sar Kheng had ordered the police to ensure Ho Sok's safety, but Hok Lundy chose to handle things his own way, according to high-ranking sources close to the minister.

This was later confirmed by Heng Pov, the former Phnom Penh police chief, after he fell out with Hok Lundy. While he was on the run from criminal charges stacked against him, Heng Pov accused Cambodia's police supremo and security chief not only of murdering Ho Sok, but also the union leader Chea Vichea and film star Piseth Pilika, in revelations to the French magazine L'Express.

Diplomats in Phnom Penh routinely referred to Hok Lundy as a "thug". This reputation was further enhanced by his role in the burning of the Thai embassy in January 2003. The police chief, who was normally no fan of demonstrators, had permitted anti-Thai protestors to run riot, attacking Thai-owned properties all over Phnom Penh. In the aftermath of this violence he persuaded the prime minister to sack the capital's popular governor, his arch-rival Chea Sophara, as a scapegoat.

That Hun Sen sided with his police chief was no surprise, as Hok Lundy had already married his daughter off to one of Hun Sen's sons, thus consolidating close family ties among Cambodia's clannish ruling elite.

Lundy was also implicated in drug trafficking, the return of refugees to countries where they faced persecution and human trafficking. Two US Drug Enforcement Agency officials and a former unnamed US ambassador to Cambodia confirmed to Human Rights Watch that the US government was aware of Hok Lundy's involvement in drug trafficking. In February 2006, the US State Department's human trafficking office specifically cited Hok Lundy's alleged involvement in human trafficking as grounds for denying him a visa. That decision was linked to a brothel raid in December 2004, after which Hok Lundy reportedly ordered the release within hours of several traffickers, before an investigation could be conducted.

However, after 9/11 the Cambodian government had become cooperative in the war on terrorism. In March 2006, the month after the refusal of a visa, the FBI nonetheless awarded Hok Lundy a medal for his support for the US global war on terrorism, and the US ambassador to Cambodia, Joseph Mussomeli, praised Lundy's cooperation with the US in drug trafficking and human smuggling. State Department officials confirmed at the time that Hok Lundy had been invited to visit the FBI specifically because of his purported cooperation in counterterrorism. When, in April 2007, the FBI invited him to Washington for such discussions, Brad Adams, Human Rights Watch's Asia director, commented: "Hok Lundy's alleged involvement in political violence and organised crime in Cambodia means that the FBI should be investigating him, not hosting him."

The sudden death of a man who had made many enemies has sparked much speculation in Cambodia that the helicopter crash may not have been an accident, despite reports of bad weather. The helicopter caught fire, and the government has promised an investigation. Many people would have cause to celebrate the death of Cambodia's Mr Untouchable.

A French online agency, K-Set, has reported that Chea Mony, the brother

of the slain trade unionist and presidentof the Free Trade Union of Workers in the Kingdom of Cambodia, has said that the death of the top policeman means that the number of murders of politicians, entertainers and Cambodian reporters will undoubtedly be reduced, but regrets that he was never brought to justice.

The Memory Police

The freedom of historical debate is under attack by the memory police

Well-intentioned laws that prescribe how we remember terrible events are foolish, unworkable and counter-productive

Among the ways in which freedom is being chipped away in Europe, one of the less obvious is the legislation of memory. More and more countries have laws saying you must remember and describe this or that historical event in a certain way, sometimes on pain of criminal prosecution if you give the wrong answer. What the wrong answer is depends on where you are. In Switzerland, you get prosecuted for saying that the terrible thing that happened to the Armenians in the last years of the Ottoman empire was not a genocide. In Turkey, you get prosecuted for saying it was. What is state-ordained truth in the Alps is state-ordained falsehood in Anatolia.

This week a group of historians and writers, of whom I am one, has pushed back against this dangerous nonsense. In what is being called the "Appel de Blois", published in Le Monde last weekend, we maintain that in a free country "it is not the business of any political authority to define historical truth and to restrict the liberty of the historian by penal sanctions". And we argue against the accumulation of so-called "memory laws". First signatories include historians such as Eric Hobsbawm, Jacques Le Goff and Heinrich August Winkler. It's no accident that this appeal originated in France, which has the most intense and tortuous recent experience with memory laws and prosecutions. It began uncontroversially in 1990, when denial of the Nazi Holocaust of the European Jews, along with other crimes against humanity defined by the 1945 Nuremberg tribunal, was made punishable by law in France - as it is in several other European countries. In 1995, the historian Bernard Lewis was convicted by a French court for arguing that, on the available evidence, what happened to the Armenians might not correctly be described as genocide according to the definition in international law.

A further law, passed in 2001, says the French Republic recognises slavery as a crime against humanity, and this must be given its "consequential place" in teaching and research. A group representing some overseas French citizens subsequently brought a case against the author of a study of the African slave trade, Olivier Pétré-Grenouilleau, on the charge of "denial of a crime against humanity". Meanwhile, yet another law was passed, from a very different point of view, prescribing that school curricula should recognise the "positive role" played by the French presence overseas, "especially in North Africa".

Fortunately, at this point a wave of indignation gave birth to a movement called Liberty for History (lph-asso.fr), led by the French historian Pierre Nora, which is also behind the Appel de Blois. The case against Pétré-Grenouilleau was dropped, and the "positive role" clause nullified. But it remains incredible that such a proposal ever made it to the statute book in one of the world's great democracies and homelands of historical scholarship.

This kind of nonsense is all the more dangerous when it comes wearing the mask of virtue. A perfect example is the recent attempt to enforce limits to the interpretation of history across the whole EU in the name of "combating racism and xenophobia". A proposed "framework decision" of the justice and home affairs council of the EU, initiated by the German justice minister Brigitte Zypries, suggests that in all EU member states "publicly condoning, denying or grossly trivialising crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes" should be "punishable by criminal penalties of a maximum of at least between one and three years imprisonment".

Who will decide what historical events count as genocide, crimes against humanity or war crimes, and what constitutes "grossly trivialising" them?

International humanitarian law indicates some criteria, but exactly what events qualify is a matter of often heated dispute. The only cast-iron way to ensure EU-wide uniformity of treatment would be for the EU to agree a list - call it the Zypries List - of qualifying horrors. You can imagine the horse-trading behind closed doors in Brussels. (Polish official to French counterpart: "OK, we'll give you the Armenian genocide if you give us the Ukrainian famine.") Pure Gogol.

Since some countries with a strong free-speech tradition, including Britain, objected to Zypries' original draft, the proposed agreement now also says: "Member states may choose to punish only conduct which is either carried out in a manner likely to disturb public order or which is threatening, abusive or insulting." So in practice, individual countries will continue to do things their own way.

Despite its manifold flaws, this framework decision was approved by the European Parliament in November 2007, but it has not been brought back to the justice and home affairs council for final approval. I emailed the relevant representative of the current French presidency of the EU to ask why, and just received this cryptic but encouraging reply: "The FD 'Racism and xenophobia' is not ready for adoption, as it is suspended to some outstanding parliamentary reservations." Merci, madame liberté: that will do till the end of this year. Then let the Czech presidency of the EU, which covers the first half of next year, strike it down for good - with a dose of the Good Soldier Svejk's common sense about history.

Let me be clear. I believe it is very important that nations, states, peoples and other groups (not to mention individuals) should face up, solemnly and publicly, to the bad things done by them or in their name. The West German leader Willy Brandt falling silently to his knees in Warsaw before a monument to the victims and heroes of the Warsaw Ghetto is, for me, one of the noblest images of postwar European history. For people to face up to these things, they have to know about them in the first place. So these subjects must be taught in schools as well as publicly commemorated. But before they are taught, they must be researched. The evidence must be uncovered, checked and sifted, and various possible interpretations tested against it.

It's this process of historical research and debate that requires complete freedom - subject only to tightly drawn laws of libel and slander, designed to protect living persons but not governments, states or national pride (as in the notorious article 301 of the Turkish penal code). The historian's equivalent of a natural scientist's experiment is to test the evidence against all possible hypotheses, however extreme, and then submit what seems to him or her the most convincing interpretation for criticism by professional colleagues and for public debate. This is how we get as near as one ever can to truth about the past.

How, for example, do you refute the absurd conspiracy theory, which apparently still has some currency in parts of the Arab world, that "the Jews" were behind the September 11 2001 terrorist attacks on New York? By forbidding anyone from saying that, on pain of imprisonment? No. You refute it by refuting it. By mustering all the available evidence, in free and open debate. This is not just the best way to get at the facts; ultimately, it's the best way to combat racism and xenophobia too. So join us, please, to see off the nanny state and its memory police.

by T. G. Ash