Three photo journalists from Berlin have been arrested reporting about the protests of Kurdish people in Turkey. A support group in Germany around the photographers have published a given a press release:
Yesterday (11th October 2014) in the late evening/early night hours the three German freelance photojournalists Ruben Martin Neugebauer, Björn Kietzmann and Christian Grodotzki got arrested by the Turkish Police on the streets of Diyarbakir/Turkey. Our colleagues where there to cover the current situation in East-Turkey. The lawyers confirmed that they got arrested while talking to people near a mall.
The police claim that our three colleagues (who have German and international Press IDs and work for German and international newspapers and photo-agencies) are “provocateurs”, thought we do not know for what reasons they got exactly arrested.
Currently they are held at the “TEM Sube Polis Okule Yani” (Anti Terror Police Unit) in Diyarbakir and got interrogated. The police want to bring them to court on Sunday (13th October 2014) and press charges against them. As a colleague of ours managed to confirm at least two other foreign Journalists are imprisoned alongside them.
The German Embassy as well as the German Foreign Office is informed, as are Reporters without Borders (German Section).
All three colleagues ask now the media to report on this incident and put pressure on the Turkish state. Turkey has had a bad reputation on Freedom of the Press since several years, but especially after the Gezi Park Protests the situation got a lot worse, also for the international Press.
We urge the Turkish State to respect the journalistic freedom to report on the situation in East-Turkey and to stop violating the basic rights of Journalists.
12th of October, 5pm, Berlin/Germany
