Ragıp Zarakolu Receives PL Foundation Peace Prize

Publisher and human rights defender Ragıp Zarakolu has been awarded PL Foundation Peace Prize for his extraordinary efforts in the areas of freedom of thought and expression.

Zarakolu will receive the award by PL Foundation President Poul Sögaard on November 10 in Copenhagen.

PL Foundation Peace Prize is awarded to organizations and people who struggle for democracy without resorting to violence within the scope of United Nations Declaration of Human Rights.

PL Foundation Peace Prize was firstly awarded to theater director Ali Tuygan from Turkey for his play named Çıkmaz Sokak (Blind Street) about tortures that took place during the Greek military junta.

Ali Taygun couldn’t have made it to Copenhagen because of the ban on leaving the country imposed by then administrators, and that the prize was awarded in Ankara by Paul Lauritzen, Carl Seeber, and Prof. Erik Siesby who are among PL Foundation administrators.

Ragıp Zarakolu

Ragıp Zarakolu was born in 1948 on Heybeliada, the second largest of the Prince Islands, in İstanbul. He started publishing with his wife, Ayşe Nur Zarakolu in 1977. He never abandoned his struggle for “popularizing respect for different ideas and cultures in Turkey” despite pressures, his books being seized or destroyed, heavy fines and being sent to prison. Zarakolu serving as the President of Publishers’ Union of Turkey Committee of Free Publishing has worked on Kurdish question and condition of minorities in Turkey.

Zarakolu lastly was arrested together with his son Deniz Zarakolu within the scope of Group of Communities in Kurdistan (KCK) case* in 2011. He remained in prison until April 2012. (EA/TK)

*Between April 2009 and October 2010 some 1,800 people were detained on charges of being members of KCK/TM. Most of them were politicians active in the meanwhile closed down Democratic Society Party (DTP) or the Peace and Democracy Party (BDP). Trade unionists and human rights defenders have also been among the detainees. (Source: Wikipedia)

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