The journalist, presenter and author Necmettin Salaz died of cirrhosis of the liver on Saturday. A Kurd from Van, he worked for the free Kurdish media for forty years and lived in southern Kurdistan (northern Iraq) for ten years. He was born in Van in 1958 and graduated as a teacher from the local education institute in 1979. He had been close to leftist Kurdish movements since the mid-1970s and was arrested several times. After the military coup of 1980, he spent almost five years in the notorious torture prison in Amed (tr. Diyarbakir). After that, he was banned from public service for life and could no longer work as a teacher. Before the Kurdish party HADEP was banned, he was an advisor in the municipality of Van.

Salaz hosted the programme Başûr Gündemi (Southern Kurdistan Agenda) on Medya Haber TV and was the author of numerous articles and books on Kurdistan. Due to his illness, he had been receiving medical treatment for a long time and had been in intensive care for a week.