[Congressional Record Volume 154, Number 13 (Monday, January 28, 2008)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E83]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




       ON THE ANNIVERSARY OF THE MURDER OF JOURNALIST HRANT DINK

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                          HON. ADAM B. SCHIFF

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                        Monday, January 28, 2008

  Mr. SCHIFF. Madam Speaker, it is with a mixture of anger and sadness 
that I rise today to honor the 1-year anniversary of the murder of 
Hrant Dink, the courageous Armenian-Turkish journalist, who was 
murdered by a Turkish extremist.
  Mr. Dink founded the bilingual newspaper Agos in 1996, giving a voice 
to Turkey's Armenians. He acted on his beliefs of building community 
and acknowledging the past, for which he was persecuted, prosecuted and 
eventually forced to pay the ultimate price. Clearly, however, his 
life's work was not in vain; at his funeral, approximately 100,000 
people marched behind his coffin, chanting, ``We are all Dink. We are 
all Armenians.''
  Before Mr. Dink's untimely death last January, the Turkish government 
constantly tried to limit his freedom of speech. It confiscated copies 
of Agos on many occasions and on the flimsiest of pretenses. In 2004, 
Mr. Dink wrote an article stating that Turkey's first woman pilot was 
an Armenian orphan adopted after 1915. The government convicted him of 
insulting ``Turkishness'' under Article 301 of the Penal Code, a law 
specifically designed to prevent discussion of the Armenian Genocide. 
He received a 6-month suspended sentence. This was just one of several 
such prosecutions against Mr. Dink.
  Mr. Dink's courage to confront the historical facts of the Armenian 
Genocide cost him his life. He continually received threatening 
telephone calls, e-mails, and letters. He reported this terrorization 
to the police, but they failed to protect him. On January 19, 2007, an 
extreme nationalist teenager shot Mr. Dink three times outside the Agos 
offices in Istanbul, killing him. Court hearings continue, but Mr. 
Dink's family stated that the investigation of his murder was conducted 
in secrecy and is incomplete.
  Turkish prosecutions under Article 301 increased in 2007 and 
continued to affect Mr. Dink's family. Arat Dink, his son, published an 
interview in which Mr. Dink said that the 1915 to 1917 Armenian 
massacres constituted genocide. Last October Arat Dink received a 1-
year suspended sentence for publishing this interview. Punishing Mr. 
Dink's son for publishing his murdered father's words is a travesty and 
exposes the lengths to which Ankara will go to hide the truth about the 
Armenian Genocide.
  Mr. Dink's death was devastating to the democratic principle of a 
free and unfettered press and to the efforts of a handful of Turkish 
intellectuals who have been fighting to expose the crimes of Turkey's 
Ottoman predecessor. Denying the Armenian Genocide harms Turkey and 
imperils the future of this important nation. As the world marks the 
anniversary of Dink's murder, I reiterate my call for Turkey to honor 
the memory of Hrant Dink by repealing Article 301, and to acknowledge 
the truth of the Armenian Genocide.
  Together with his family and colleagues, the Armenian community in 
Turkey, and his admirers around the world, we remember Hrant Dink, 
heroic defender of speech and human rights, on the 1-year anniversary 
of his murder.

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