Etkin News Agency (ETHA) made a written statement regarding the detention of their reporter along with the members of the Socialist Party of the Oppressed (ESP) and the Federation of Socialist Youth Associations (SGDF).

 

The statement is as follows: 

 

"ETKİN NEWS AGENCY WON'T BE SILENCED

 

Once again, we woke up with a detention attack. The house where our agency employees are living was raided by the special operations police at midnight. Special operations police broke the door, pointed their long-barreled weapons and laid those in the house on the ground. The agency employees' house was plundered under the name of searching.  The computers in the house were seized during the search. 

 

After hours of search, ETHA reporter Pınar Gayıp was detained due to an investigation opened against her for following and reporting a funeral in Gazi District. Since there is a confidentiality order in the case, detainees will not be allowed to meet with lawyers for 24 hours. As part of the investigation, we learned that 19 people, including the Socialist Party of the Oppressed (ESP) Co-Chair Şahin Tümüklü, were detained. 19 people, including our reporter Gayıp, were taken to the İstanbul Police Headquarters on Vatan Avenue.

 

Neither the Etkin News Agency nor its employees have faced this detention attack for the first time. Many of ETHA employees were detained before and remained arrested for years.This attack against ETHA is part of an operation to silence the opposition press, such as the detention of journalists working in the Mesopotamia Agency and Jinnews yesterday in Van. 

 

However, ETHA was not silenced. Because the publishing principle was, "in the pursuit of the truth, inside the life." Because it comes from a strong resistance tradition of the socialist press. Once again we shout;  free press workers have never been silenced and will never be. 

 

We demand that the detentions against us to be ended and our friend Pınar Gayıp to be released at once.

 

Journalism is not a crime!