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ROJ TV in the Land of the Snow Queen
25.1.2012
By Naila Bozo |
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January
25, 2012
Once upon a time there was a troll, Hans Christian
Andersen wrote. This troll was the worst of the
trolls, he was the Devil and the Devil had a mirror.
It was a wicked invention; everything good and
beautiful became revolting and disgusting when
reflected by the mirror.
One day, the Devil flew around in the air with his
mirror, reflecting the divine sky but it was too
much beauty for the mirror to handle. It broke into
millions of pieces, some as small as grains of sand.
They fell onto the ground, but also into the hearts
and eyes of men, women and children whose heart
froze to ice and whose eyes could now only see that
which was unpleasant and evil.
The Verdict Of ROJ TV
Not many miles away from the birthplace of Hans
Christian Andersen and merely 137 years and a few
months after his death, the verdict of the trial of
the Kurdish TV-channel ROJ TV was announced.
We were 500 snowmen outside the court in Copenhagen,
paralysed and silenced by the cold gushes of wind.
Then, we heard a scream of joy; we all melted and
became a sea of flames.
I was burning and freezing when I turned my back to
the dancing crowd, bowed my head and tweeted ”we
won.”
We did not win. Yes, ROJ TV was allowed to keep
broadcasting from Denmark but only because of
formalities in the Danish penal law; a penal law so
vague and obscure that the satellite provider,
Eutelsat, suspended its agreement with ROJ TV and
shut down its satellite signal to avoid being part
of ”terrorist activities.”
The Danish court ruled that ROJ TV has acted as a
mouthpiece for terror. This ruling was based on the
judge’s conviction that ROJ TV is controlled by PKK,
a Kurdish rebel group listed as a terror
organisation by the European Union, the United
States and Turkey, in regard to both finance and
content. Therefore, the court sentenced the two
companies behind ROJ TV to pay a fine of
approximately 900,000 dollars, a verdict that was
appealed to High Court three days later.
The verdict of ROJ TV is 190 pages long. The
following section will present the essential
conclusions that were summarised by the Danish
newspaper, Jyllandsposten.
1 – From February 7, 2008 to February 10, 2010 ROJ
TV has acted as a mouthpiece for the terror
organisation, PKK.
2 – The TV-station has repeated messages from PKK
without presenting other views. The guerrilla is
portrayed in a positive way and manner that
indicates more than sympathy for PKK.
3 – There is however no proof of these links between
ROJ TV and PKK in the period June 10, 2006 to
February, 2008 which had also been a count in the
charge against ROJ TV.
4 – PKK has ”to a great extent” supported ROJ TV
financially from 2006 to 2010
5 – The decision about what ROJ TV is allowed to
broadcast is made by a media company in Belgium. The
department in Denmark has no influence on what
programmes to broadcast.
6 – Documents found in Belgium show that individuals
with close relations to PKK have had the final word
in regard to what ROJ TV should or should not
broadcast about PKK.
7 – The two companies, ROJ TV A/S and Mesopotamia
Broadcast A/S, have promoted PKK activities and are
therefore sentenced to pay a combined fine of
approximately 900,000 dollars.
8 – The companies are acquitted prosecutors’ demand
of suspending the broadcasting license in Denmark.
The Danish penal law cannot on legal basis
confiscate the rights of companies, associations,
etc.
One Man’s Terrorist
When the trial of ROJ TV started in August 2011, the
court not only had to decide whether ROJ TV was a
mouthpiece for terror or not, but also if PKK was
indeed a terror organisation as Turkey, the European
Union and the United States have listed it to be.
The judge looked at the terror lists, she looked at
the extracts from ROJ TV’s programmes selected by
the prosecutors and then found herself enlightened
enough to declare PKK a terror organisation.
Now, this can nothing but enrage people seeking
justice and expecting nothing but justice from a
court in Denmark that holds its freedom so dear, so
dear.
How can anyone regard Turkey’s terror list
trustworthy when Turkey is infamous for its
treatment of journalists and its restrictions on
freedom of press and freedom of speech all the while
referring to its terror law?
How can anyone regard the US’ terror list
trustworthy when the US only removed Nelson Mandela
from the list 4 years ago, when the US is ignorant
enough to think that “by killing people who has
killed people we can teach people not to kill
people” and when the US still has not closed the
most terrifying man-made institution on this Earth,
Guantanamo Bay?
How can anyone regard the EU terror list trustworthy
when the European Union Court in 2008 annulled its
ruling that PKK was a terror group?
How can anyone regard terror lists trustworthy when
it is common knowledge that one man’s terrorist is
another man’s freedom fighter?
How can anyone regard terror lists trustworthy when
it is always the ”state”, ”the richest and the
biggest” that has enough money and power to make up
a list, put people on it and say: ”There you go, one
terror list, please follow it or I will make your
life a living Hell.”
How?
The judge did not even allow for ROJ TV lawyer,
Bjoern Elmquist, to present his material about ROJ
TV to the same extent as the prosecutors. This has
given the prosecutors, who have been criticised for
their close and friendly relationship with the
authorities in Ankara, plenty of opportunities to
portray ROJ TV and PKK as terrorists without the
risk of being proven wrong by Elmquist.
An Unjust Law
The entire trial of ROJ TV has been a curious one.
This has caused many experts to comment upon the
fact that the judge did not take into consideration
that she was dealing with a TV-channel and should
therefore judge ROJ TV by the rules that apply for
the media.
If the media is not allowed to interview the part in
a conflict called the terrorist, then who is? Yes,
ROJ TV may have portrayed the Kurdish guerrillas as
freedom fighters, but PKK is after all the
resistance movement that was formed as a re-action
to Turkey’s oppression of the Kurdish people, a
tyranny and brutality only condemned in vague words
by the rest of the world.
The Kurdish people and ROJ TV are puppets in a play
dominated by world leaders. If the Kurdish people do
not speak up, it is massacred by the Turkish state,
but if it does speak up, it is silenced by the
European Union and United States.
Henry David Thoreau (1817 – 1862), author of the
essay “Civil Disobedience”, wrote:
Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the
least degree, resign his con science to the
legislator? Why has every man a con science, then? I
think that we should be men first, and subjects
afterward. It is not desirable to cultivate a
respect for the law, so much as for the right. […]
Law never made men a whit more just; and, by means
of their respect for it, even the well disposed are
daily made the agents of in justice.
If the law is seeking to silence the rightful
rebellion of the Kurdish people against the barbaric
and heartless oppression, then the law is unjust;
then the governments are what Thoreau calls the
agents of injustice.
ROJ TV has a conscience that cannot remain silent
under Turkey’s oppressive regime and is therefore
offering itself as being the mouthpiece for the
Kurdish people, dwell on this for a moment:
mouthpiece for the Kurdish people.
The Kurdish people consist of freedom fighters, only
freedom fighters. Kurdistan is freedom for it is
borderless and those who fight for freedom are
Kurds.
We Face Death
Everything is relative and has to be seen in its
context. ROJ TV is not the average TV-channel whose
viewers are safe at home and free to speak the
language they want, read the books they want, sing
the songs they want or even wear the clothes they
want.
There was an incident during one court session. The
prosecutors were showing an excerpt from ROJ TV and
they pointed out that the journalists were wearing
PKK-clothing. The looks from the Kurdish audience in
the courtroom must have been those of incredulity
and astonishment; this was merely another ignorant
comment from the prosecutors who,www.ekurd.net
if they had done their research properly and if the
judge had not dismissed all Elmquist’s witnesses
including Leyla Zana, would have known more about
the Kurdish culture and understood that the ROJ TV
journalists were wearing Kurdish clothes.
ROJ TV is much more than the average TV-channel; it
gives the Kurdish people a sense of unity that one
rarely feels because of the brutal division and
oppression of Kurdistan. It is the symbol of the
peaceful Kurdish struggle for freedom; it is a
mouthpiece for freedom, a mouthpiece for our freedom
fighters like members of BDP, the pro-Kurdish party
in Turkey, and the passionate Kurdish youth fighting
for its identity.
ROJ TV is perceived a mouthpiece for terrorism
because the world does not know what terrorism is.
ROJ TV is perceived a mouthpiece for terrorism
because the human being is a suppressor of
oppression.
ROJ TV is perceived a mouthpiece for terrorism
because it is alive, it is not afraid of man-made
institutions or death.
To be a freedom fighter is to be alive because being
constant aware of death makes you kiss the earth
softly, rest your cheek on the scabrous bark of a
tree and lay your head on sweet smelling moss. To be
alive is what the rest of the world fails to be
because being safe and comfortable is to be dead.
You are only alive if life tastes like the salty
sweat that evaporates from your body when you are
fighting in what seems to be Hell.
Boiling Blood
Denmark is the kingdom of the Snow Queen and the
West is her empire; she reigns it with a coldness
that renders her vassals motionless and speechless.
The cold winds carry flakes of snow, which the Snow
Queen weaves into the clothes of her subjects,
thereby hindering the small pieces of the Devil’s
wicked mirror from leaving the eyes and hearts of
men.
The Snow Queen’s most loyal servant, the vicious and
despicable troll, the worst of trolls, the Devil is
laughing, his plan is working: Every single one of
the cold, dead vassals see only a distortion of that
which is beautiful, stunning, ravishing, alive!
The troll and his empress have a weakness, though,
Hans Christian Andersen revealed: the small pieces
of the troll’s wicked mirror can be melted and oh,
who is better to melt ice than the burning Kurd with
the boiling blood?
The Snow Queen and the wickedest of trolls can
easily be defeated. Every Kurdish freedom fighter
has flames shooting from his fingertips, flames kept
alive by the blazing, roaring Sun.
As long as the Sun is burning so long will ROJ TV
burn; because ROJ TV is the mirror in which the Sun
reflects itself.
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