Turkish magazine nokta get in trouble for remake of Photo Op
sorry we don’t have the skills to translate this for you all
here’s the link to their article and our call for the right to freedom of expression
when we made photo op in 2005 we were intent on making a set of anti war posters ahead of the G8 summit in scotland. We were against the invasion of iraq by the us and it’s allies, we had demonstrated on the streets of london alongside a million other citizens and millions more worlwide. The invasion went ahead a month later and by 2005 the civic structure of iraq was destroyed and daily life for civilians across iraq devastated.
In the montage of blair we were making clear our opinion of the depth of his reason for invading Iraq, extremely shallow, and heavily criticising his flagrant abuse of power.
There has been ongoing censorship of the image in the corporate sector but the freedom of press laws are strong in the UK and are perhaps the one area of civil liberties that has not been successfully attacked by the terrorism bill laws brought in by blair and his government and continued by cameron and the conservatives.
Freedom of speech and freedom of press is a fundamental off democracies – without it any claim to democracy is just gestural not practical and has no chance of progressing.
It allows nasty violations of human rights to go uncriticesed and unchallenged.
It heads towards dictatorship.
We strongly condemn the authorities in turkey for attacking nokta magazine and questioning their right to criticise government actions – nokta’s work is vital to all turkish people and vital to government and citizen alike. Without freedom of press what is government but an unchallenged, deaf, old power.