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568 Broadway, suite 401 New York, NY 10012 212 334-1660 Phone 212 334-2181 Fax pen@pen.org |
672 S. Lafayette Park Pl., #42 Los Angeles, CA 90057 213 365-8500 Phone 213 365-9616 Fax pen@pen-usa-west.org |
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October 11, 2002
The Honorable Colin Powell
The Honorable John Ashcroft Dear Secretary Powell and Mr. Attorney General: We are writing on behalf of more than 3,500 professional writers who are members of PEN American Center and PEN Center USA, the two U.S.-based centers of International PEN, to express our shock over reports that Turkish journalist, writer and political scientist Dr. Haluk Gerger was recently denied entry to the United States. According to information we have received from our international colleagues, Dr. Gerger and his wife flew to the United States on October 1, 2002, and presented their passports, complete with U.S. visas issued in 1999 and valid for 10 years, to U.S. officials at Newark Airport. At that moment, Professor Haluk was informed that his visa had been cancelled by the U.S. State Department. With no plausible explanation for his treatment, he was reportedly photographed and fingerprinted, and he and his wife were forced to return to Munich on the immediate outbound flight. As you must know, Professor Gerger is well known in Turkey for his work as a writer, academic, and human rights activist, and he has earned an international reputation for his courage in challenging restrictions on freedom of expression in Turkey - challenges that earned him two prison terms in the 1990s. International PEN vigorously protested both sentences, secured under anti-terror laws that the United States and European nations consistently condemned as serving to restrict the Turkish people's universally-guaranteed right to freedom of expression. PEN was not alone in protesting Professor Gerger's prison sentences: the U.S. State Department cited his case in discussions of misuse of anti-terror laws in its 1994 and 1995 Country Reports on Human Rights, and issued him a visa in 1999 despite the fact that he was facing trial proceedings in the Ankara State Security Court on yet more charges connected to his statements and writing. In Europe, meanwhile, the European Court of Human Rights found that Professor Gerger had been unjustly imprisoned under Turkey's anti-terror laws. What was wrong before September 11, 2001 remains wrong today. Nothing can alter the fact that Turkey has used and continues to use overly-broad anti-terror legislation to suppress the opinions and ideas of Professor Gerger and hundreds like him. Before September 11, 2001, the United States consistently protested such treatment, expressed concern for Professor Gerger and many other writers, journalists, and intellectuals like him, and actively sought to preserve their right to seek, receive, and impart information, up to and including their right to travel to the United States. To withdraw this support now - worse, to reverse course and join in abridging these rights - can only weaken U.S. efforts to promote democratization and human rights around the world. We therefore respectfully request that your offices conduct thorough reviews of the decision to deny Professor Gerger entry to the United States and take action to renew his visa immediately. Sincerely,
JOEL CONARROE
AIMEE LIU |