Istanbul’s Committee Against Racism and Discrimination of the Human Rights Association of Turkey released a letter addressed to the President of the Grand National Assembly of Turkey, regarding the attack against Garo Paylan in parliament on May 2, Asbarez reported.
Turkey human rights defenders urge peaker to condemn attack against Garo Paylan
STEPANAKERT, MAY 12, ARTSAKHPRESS: Human rights defenders urged the speaker to “fulfill your responsibility, to denounce the acts against Garo Paylan in the Assembly room, and to declare that you stand against racism and that you will apply sanctions against racist assaults occurring under the roof of the National Assembly.”
“HDP member Garo Paylan (Istanbul) has also been publicly subjected to racial slurs targeting his Armenian identity during these physical assaults. Those who have called him “the Armenian bastard” and “the ASALA boy” have not only exposed their own racism, but also marked Garo Paylan as a target for racist attacks,” the letter reads.
“With these words hurled at an Armenian Member of Parliament at a time when racial hatred against Armenians as well as Kurds has peaked in the press, on social media, on the street, and in daily life; the very laws reinstated by the Republic of Turkey have been egregiously violated by legislators themselves. Article 216 of the Turkish Penal Code defines the act of ‘the public incitement of one group of the public to hatred and hostility against another group” as a crime under circumstances when “it constitutes an open and imminent threat’."
