Amnesty International Gets Back Its Bank Accounts After 17 Months

The bank accounts of the Turkish branch of Amnesty International (UAÖ), which had been frozen upon the demand of the İstanbul governorship in January 2007, have been released.

Ville S. Forsman, the director of the Turkish branch, said that the blockage on their accounts have been removed yesterday (May28), after their application two months ago.

The governorship had claimed that the organization was collecting money illegally.

The trial will continue, according to Forsman, but they will be able to use their bank accounts.

He said, “The three bank accounts that we were using at the time were frozen. Since we are an international organization we were able to continue our activities by opening new accounts. But I do not know how a local organization would have dealt with such a problem.”

Commenting on the incident when it occured, Levent Korkut from Amnesty International had said that they could not even find out the reason behind this implementation for a long time, the officials would not reply to their inquiries.

The organization was also fined in May for the same reason.

According to the information supplied by Korkut at the time, the Turkish branch of Amnesty International has not collected contributions since its foundation, relying only on its membership dues.

Korkut thinks that “As a result of an unlawful implementation, both our freedom of association and our right of property were violated.” (EÜ/GG/TB)