07/13/2021

Trial against Hozan Cane (July 14)

Cologne-based singer has to appear in court again (Press Release)

Tomorrow – Wednesday, July 14 – the proceedings against the German-Kurdish singer Hozan Cane (artist's name) will be continued. "Cane's only crime was to sing for the freedom of the Kurdish people and, in doing so, to protest against the ethnocidal policy of the Turkish state," stated Dr. Kamal Sido, Middle East Consultant of the Society for Threatened Peoples (STP). "Since the founding of the republic, Turkey is trying to destroy the Kurdish identity. However, Cane's songs are also about a possible reconciliation with the Turkish people." Just like many other Kurdish artists, Cane advocates for a peaceful solution to the Kurdish question – within and outside of Turkey. Now, the trial has been reopened. An appeals court had repealed the previous sentence due to lack of evidence. Cane has been kept detained for more than three years.

Cane's s daughter, Gönül Örs, had been detained too – but she was meanwhile allowed to leave Turkey. She returned to Cologne at the end of June. "Cane was sentenced to 15 years imprisonment based on false accusations. What is especially shocking is that this sentence was based on information that German security agencies had passed on to Turkey," Sido criticized. Further, he demanded the German government to stop supporting the Turkish government in its measures against Kurdish and Turkish activists. Instead, the German government should try and persuade its NATO partner to take back all restrictions on the freedom of expression and freedom of the media. "Ankara must respect international human rights standards! Turkey must guarantee full equality and equal treatment of all peoples and religious communities in the country – also in courts."

The STP has been in contact with Hozan Cane for years. Among other things, she appeared at a joint conference of the STP and the Friedrich Naumann Foundation in March 2010. The 49-year-old singer was arrested in the city of Edirne shortly before the presidential and parliamentary elections in Turkey in June 2018, where she had supported the election campaign of the pro-Kurdish HDP party. She was accused of terror propaganda, based on content that the singer had shared on her Facebook and Twitter profile between 2014 and 2018. In November 2018, Cane was sentenced to more than six years in prison for membership in the banned Kurdish Workers Party PKK. Further, a travel ban was issued.