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Ragip Zarakolu is one of Scottish PEN’s adopted cases

Publisher and Human Rights Defender Ragip Zarakolu Arrested

The Turkish police detained Ragip Zarakolu, a well-known human rights activist and director of Belge Publishing House, in Turkey. Zarakolu is also the chairman of the Publishers Association Freedom to Publish Committee of Turkey.

Zarakolu was taken into custody on October 28, 2011, during a large-scale manhunt in Istanbul against Kurdish activists.

His son, Deniz Zarakolu, editor of the Belge Publishing House, was arrested on October 4.

Ragip Zarakolu’s Belge Publishing House has published numerous books as well on the oppression of the national minorities in Turkey as the Armenian Genocide.

Earlier on same day, within the same man-hunt, Professor Büsra Ersanli,a constitutional law expert and a member of the pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party's (BDP) intra-party constitutional commission, was detained along with dozens of others.

To read more about this and to learn more about Ragip Zarakolu, International PEN's website has details as well as addresses to contact.