11 more detained as part of witch-hunt in Turkey

Turkish media reported on Monday that 11 people, three of them women, have been detained in Kahramanmaraş province as part of an investigation into the faith-based civic Gülen movement.

The 11 detainees are under investigation for use of the ByLock smartphone app, which is no different from WhatApp, Skype, Signal or Blackberry Messenger. Despite the fact that the app was widely available on the Internet, the government believes it was used by movement supporters for encrypted messaging.

Human rights organizations strongly argue that right to privacy requires encrypted messaging. A document published by Amnesty International (AI) about arrested human rights activists in 2017 in Turkey, underlined the possession of internationally available and widely downloaded application does not represent a criminal offence. “The Government’s methods for identifying users are seriously flawed in general,” stated in the document.

On March 4, 2016, The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein published a written statement over a hot discussion between Apple and FBI and pointed out that “Encryption and anonymity are needed as enablers of both freedom of expression and opinion, and the right to privacy. It is neither fanciful nor an exaggeration to say that, without encryption tools, lives may be endangered.”

More specifically, David Kaye, the UN Special Rapporteur for Human rights, highlighted in his report submitted to the UN’s Human Rights Committee (6-23 June 2017) that governmental action on Bylock usage is the criminalization of encryption which is an example of human rights abuses.

Finally, a recent report published by Stockholm Center for Freedom (SCF) has revealed the absurd pretexts used by prosecutors to indict suspects and judges to jail innocent people who are alleged to have been affiliated with the Gülen movement. Thus, the report finds that the fundamental principle of law such as “no crime without law,” widely and systematically has been violated.

Pro-government media outlets reported that 3 of the detainees are arrested and 3 of them are released on parole. 5 people are still in custody.

Since the controversial coup attempt in 2015, hundreds of thousands of people from all walks of life have been subject to investigation on trumped up coup allegations in Turkey. (SCF with turkishminute.com)

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from SCF