The Message of Internationaly Known Defender of Linguistic Human Rights dr Tove Skutnabb-Kangas

Closing ROJ-TV would violate human rights. When Turkey cannot physically commit genocide on all Kurds, Turkey is trying to commit linguistic and cultural genocide, by trying, through forbidding the use of Kurdish in education and media, forcibly transfer Kurdish children to the Turkish group, and by causing them serious mental harm, through not allowing them to understand the teaching language and profit from education, and through not giving them true information in their own language about their history, culture, political situation and legitimate human rights.

Tove Skutnabb-Kangas (dr.)
Roskilde University, Denmark, and Åbo Akademi University, Finland (05.12.2005)

Below are the relevant Articles from United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Genocide Convention

Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Adopted and proclaimed by United Nations General Assembly resolution 217 A (III) of 10 December 1948

Article 18.

Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.

Article 19.

Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

For Kurdish text, see http://www.unhchr.ch/udhr/lang/kdb1.htm

For Turkish text, see http://www.unhchr.ch/udhr/lang/trk.htm



United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, Approved and proposed for signature and ratification or accession by United Nations General Assembly resolution 260 A (III) of 9 December 1948; entry into force 12 January 1951, in accordance with article XIII.

Article 2

In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

(a) Killing members of the group;

(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/p_genoci.htm

Selected Publications:
http://akira.ruc.dk/~tovesk/allpubl.htm