‘Without hope, we have no energy to move forward’

* Photos: Hrant Dink Foundation

Click to read the article in Turkish

The 13th International Hrant Dink Awards were presented at an online ceremony on Wednesday (September 15).

This year's awards have been granted to investigative journalist Maria Ressa, who defends press freedom in the Philippines under difficult political conditions and high personal risks, and women's rights activist and lawyer Canan Arın, who persistently continues defending gender equality and her struggle against gender based violence in Turkey.

We would like to share their full speeches at the ceremony:

Ressa: Our only defense is to shine the light

Thank you to the Hrant Dink Foundation, to the judges for recognizing our work at Rappler. It comes at a crucial time when our organization and our democracy here in the Philippines are struggling to survive.

We've written a lot about these two battlefronts that we've faced for the last five years: a brutal drug war, tens of thousands killed; and the exponential lies on social media to incite hate and stifle free speech.

We battle impunity from the Philippine government and from Facebook. Both seed violence, fear, and lies that poison our democracy.
Those lies on social media form the basis of my government's many legal cases against us.

In January 2018, the government tried to shut Rappler down, alleging we're foreign owned (we're not), that we're tax evaders (well, just six months earlier they had given us an award for being a top corporate taxpayer), along with other ridiculous charges.

In less than two years I've had to post bail 10 times. So in order to stay free and to keep working, I have to fight every step of the way. I am now prevented from travelling so I am fighting for my basic rights.

Here's the other part that's worrisome to me, this violence and hate, information operations on social media, on American social media, has only gotten worse. Governments like mine, like yours, and in more than 80 countries around the world, they use cheap armies on social media to manipulate us, to roll back democracy and attack journalists.

Here's something that we know everywhere around the world: What happens on social media doesn't stay on social media.
Online violence leads to real world violence.

Since 2016, I have felt like Sisyphus and Cassandra combined, repeatedly warning that what is happening here in the Philippines, which for the sixth year in a row Philippinos spend the most time on the internet and social media globally, for six years.

What is happening here, our dystopian present is the future of democracies around the world. American biologist EO Wilson said it best: we're facing paleolithic emotions - we are being emotionally manipulated, medieval institutions, and god-like technology.

'We are Pavlov's dogs'

Social media, with its highly profitable micro targeting, this business model, has become a behavior modification system, and we users are Pavlov's dogs experimented on in real time - with disastrous consequences. Facebook is the world's largest distributor of news, and yet studies have shown that lies laced with anger and hate spread faster and further than boring facts.

The social media platforms that deliver the facts to you are biased against facts and biased against journalists. They are - by design - dividing us and radicalizing us. This is not a free speech issue. It is not the fault of its users, of us. It's not our fault. These platforms are not merely mirroring humanity. They are making all of us our worst selves...creating emergent behavior that feeds on violence, fear, highlighting uncertainty...enabling the rise of autocrats like my leader and enabling the rise of fascism.

'Without truth, you can't have trust'

Think of it like this: Without facts, you can't have truth. Without truth, you can't have trust. Without trust, we have no shared reality, and it becomes impossible to deal with our world's existential problems: climate, coronavirus, the atom bomb that's now exploded in our information ecosystem when journalists lost our gatekeeping powers to technology companies.

Tech abdicated responsibility for the public sphere and couldn't fathom that information is a public good.

Women, people of color, the LGBTQ, those already marginalized become even more vulnerable as you'll see in the UNESCO report "The Chilling" that was released this May, it's lead author, ICFJ's Julie Posetti, was the one who convinced me to speak up when the attacks against me began. Because that's the journalists' only defense. To shine the light.

Three appeals for the future

I come out of all of this last five years of a lot of pain with these three appeals for the future:

To the men and women who work in governments like mine, using a scorched earth policy to grow power, appealing to the worst of human nature. You have the power to stop the erosion of democracy and maintain the rule of law. Your silence means consent. Don't let your ambition, or your fear, cripple the values of our next generation.

To the tech companies, the social media platforms: your business model has divided societies and weakened democracies. Personalization says my reality is different from yours...but all of these realities have to co-exist in the public sphere. You can't tear us apart to the point that we don't agree on the facts. Why should you allow lies to spread?

Yes, it's a great responsibility, but this is not a matter of free speech. It's a gate-keeping role once wielded by human journalists. As we've seen time and again, this leads to bad things. Consider making the same tough business decisions our little company in the Philippines made to protect the public sphere and to ensure democracy survives.

'Without hope, no energy to move forward'

To the journalists and activists who continue to fight: we have to stay the course. Sometimes, people say you're naïve or foolish. People say that about us. We're not. These times we're living through require that. Without hope, we have no energy to move forward. We have to take the long view, work together and know that we are not alone. This is a global battle.

This is a heavy award, the Hrant Dink Award and it smells really nice and it's amazingly beautiful. And this crack in this heavy piece of wood actually shows you the way the fracture lines of society are being split open by the attacks on social media, information operations, that's powered by governments. And here you see this bridging holding it together - that's the role of journalists. I don't think that's changed. So thank you so much for this award, for continuing to shine the light even under difficult times.

We always end everything we do in Rappler with 2 hashtags: We wish for courage, the hashtag #HoldTheLine and then this one we say as a goodbye: #CourageON

Thank you.

Arın: Amid all the atrocities...

My fellow companions,

I would like to thank you very much for awarding such a valuable prize to me. I am surprised, flattered, and honoured.
In this country, aspiring to a dignified life is just too much to ask for.

I experienced the first trauma of my life during the [Istanbul] Pogrom of 6-7 September, 1955. Let me skip some of the others in between.

Yet, I recall Muammer Aksoy, Bahriye Üçok, Uğur Mumcu; that day when Hezbollah set on fire a hotel where foreign sex workers were staying in the province of Van on 1 July 1993, burning alive 11 people and injuring 27; while the shock and the pain of this attack in Van was still fresh, the very next day how the Madimak Hotel in Sivas was set alight burning to death 35 people, including 33 artists; and the murder of Hrant Dink on 19 January 2007!

And then there are those who are not killed but are caused a great deal of suffering for the sole reason that they are intellectuals: Nazım Hikmet, Osman Kavala, Selahattin Demirtaş, and the military school students who were put into prison due to [the attempted coup of] 15 July and then forgotten. Students whose lives were shattered!

As religious fundamentalism has become stronger and more reckless than ever, femicides have turned into an everyday reality. They have introduced ridiculous decrees that offered impunity to perpetrators of child abuse for the sole purpose of protecting religious cult leaders.

Given the very limited time available, I cannot mention everyone on this long list that includes Berkin Elvan and Ali İsmail Korkmaz and many others. People who were forcibly disappeared in detention by the deep or shallow State or the executive branch, dozens of 'Saturday mothers' [Saturday Mothers/People] who have been standing watch for many years in the hope that they would at least find the remains of their children... I do not know where to start.

The state, which is supposed to be responsible for protecting the right to life of its citizens, turns a blind eye to its own acts of killing.

'Mountain gives birth to a mouse'

Politically motivated murders happen everywhere around the world. But the perpetrators are soon arrested and punished.

The gravity of the situation in Turkey is that orders come before anything else, the concept of law has completely disappeared, murders are covered up, legal proceedings are delayed beneath the façade of show trials and the mountain ultimately gives birth to a mouse!

Amid all the atrocities, amid this horrible picture, women's resistance and solidarity remains our only source of hope and courage.

One of the best examples to this is Rakel Dink who rose from the ashes just like the Phoenix by turning her immense grief upon the murder of her husband, esteemed author Hrant Dink, into hope against racism and for peace by establishing this Foundation immediately after Hrant Dink's assassination. We are grateful to her.

'Once again, happy birthday'

As you all know, today is Hrant Dink's birthday. Thanks to this Foundation and as long as this Foundation stands Hrant Dink shall forever live in the hearts of all those who love him.

I hope there will come a time when we celebrate your birthday in a world where the rule of law prevails, murders are no longer commonplace, perpetrators are actually punished, people are once again able to smile, racism is erased off the face of the earth, freedom of expression is practiced for real, and peace becomes the predominant force ... With love

Once again, happy birthday!

And let me conclude by echoing your words: Dying is not such a big deal, what really matters is to stand tall till you die.

(PT/SD)

* Source: Hrant Dink Foundation official website