Reacting to the start on Sunday of a 13-day blanket ban on protests in Ankara, and the imprisonment in pretrial detention of more than 100 people including lawyers, academics and activists ahead of the 36th NATO summit in Türkiye, Esther Major, Amnesty International’s Deputy Director Research for Europe, said:
“The blanket ban on all protests in Ankara must be lifted and everyone arbitrarily detained in prison or under house arrest in connection with the NATO summit must be released. This ban is an excessive and unjustifiable attack on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and expression. Authorities must enable and protect the right to protest and end the use of vague and overly broad national security concerns to detain people without evidence of wrongdoing.”
This ban is an excessive and unjustifiable attack on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and expression
Esther Major, Amnesty International
“Pretrial detention is an exceptional measure which cannot be deployed to prevent people from exercising their protected rights, such as freedom of peaceful assembly and expression. All the excessively broad and disproportionate restrictions that prevent the exercise of the right to peaceful assembly must be lifted.
