HDP deputy press co-chair Azad Barış celebrated the 121st anniversary of Kurdish journalism in a written statement.

Azad Barış said: “121 years have passed since Mîqdad Mîdhed Bedirxan started the publication of Kurdistan Newspaper, the first Kurdish newspaper in Cairo on 22 April 1898. Due to the oppressive and censorship practices of the Ottoman administration, the Kurdistan Newspaper, which was forced to be published in Geneva, Cairo and London, continues to be the source of inspiration for Kurdish press today.”

Kurdish journalism began 121 years ago, while in exile in Cairo and since then has been faced with repression and pressure by the successive regimes, said the HDP adding: “ The ‘90s were dark years in Kurdish society and Kurdish journalism became the voice of the painful truth and of what was going on in Turkey and Kurdistan. Many Kurdish journalists paid the price of telling the truth and exposing those crimes. They were murdered, jailed, harassed, wounded. We respectfully commemorate all press martyrs who have never ceased to be the voice of truth, despite their fundamental right, the right to life, was constantly violated.” 

From 1898 to the 1990s, from the 1990s to the present day, said the HDP, “the repression and violence against the Kurdish press have been a constant, and today is not different: journalists are arrested and imprisoned. After the 15 July [2015] coup attempt, the government is using the State of Emergency to arbitrarily prevent journalists from doing their job. They closed newspapers, magazines, news agencies, television channels and printing houses which are broadcasting Kurdish-Turkish. Many journalists have been put in prison. Despite the pressures, censorship and obstructions, the free press tradition continues to be the voice, breathing and source of both the Kurdish people and all the oppressed peoples of the Middle East.”

This honorable journey, reminded the HDP, started 121 years ago.