Arrested on charges of "membership of the organization" on November 27, 2018 in Van, the former co-chair of the Language, Culture and Art Research Association (DÎSA-DER) Naim Özden, instructor Şevket Acar, Dilber Akın, Mizgin Deniz, Gülsüm Bilge, Ferhan Yeşil and Celal Soğuk are acquitted after having been imprisoned for 5 months. 

 

CHILDREN: THEY TEACH US ABC

 

The educators were accused on the ground that: "They are trying to provide the ideological education of the organization under the name of preschool education to young children without any official permission". The court decided that there is no solid and sufficient avidence for such an accusation as well as no organizational link cannot be established. So, the court decided on the acquittal of the instructors. The court statement included following grounds: "The children whose information was consulted during the investigation phase, responded as follows: 'They teach us ABC, they teach us how to count and they don't teach us things other than those" when they were asked the following questions: 'What do your teachers tell you, do they tell you about the police and the military?'. So there has been no statements against the defendants on the process of investigation."

 

'THE PURPOSE WAS TO PREVENT KURDISH-LANGUAGE EDUCATION'

 

Acar stated that the main purpose of these arrests is to revent Kurdish-language education: "We all know very well that learning and teaching languages ​​is not a crime. However, because of the approach to Kurdish, they have illegalized our education. Nowhere around the world language education is sentenced to prison, but unfortunately we have experienced such a penalty here. Both us and the children were victimized."

 

MA/ Adnan Bilen