Raidal.com.tr- Today’s Zaman reporter Rumeysa Kiger, who was in the group that had a meeting with Prime Minister Erdoğan last week, was taken into custody this morning in Taksim. Based on the information her husband gave, she was going through Taksim Square for an interview in the morning, and she ran into some police interfering some protestors. In that chaos Kiger was taken under custody and was released at around 1.30 pm. Kiger wrote “No one is safe.” on his facebook account from the police station.
Here is Rümeysa Kiger’s text on Facebook:
“My arbitrary custody story
Friends I wanted to tell you myself about what happened, there is untrue information around. I left home in the morning in order to have an interview. As I was passing by the square I saw a few friends standing. Three of them were close to each other; one of them was a bit further elsewhere. There was press around them, shooting footage. Then an undercover cop came, started taking them away, so I followed asking where they were taking them and why, what they have done? Police said they wouldn’t do anything; they only wanted to check their IDs. I said ok then, I will be waiting for you to do your checks and bring them back, I will be waiting right here (I was at the stairs by then). They told me to step down from the stairs. I told them it was just stairs, why would I leave it, it was also my stairs. We kept on having dialogues like this for a while. Then one cop said “You talk too much, you come here too, come here,” and took me to the bus with others. There were seven of us. No one knew each other. I still don’t know any of their names, I’ve asked but I’ve forgotten. First they took us to Taksim İlkyardım Hospital. For check-ups. Then they took us to Taksim Police station. For many times they said that wasn’t custody but at the same time they didn’t let us go of course. I would like lawyers to enlighten us; if that wasn’t custody I don’t know what it was. Then they chedked if we had any record in the system. We waited for the persecutor. Meanwhile our lawyer came. They never took us out of the car into the police station. A police brought a written report. I read the report out loud to everyone in the car. First it told about the standing protesting man last night. And then there were paragraphs about people getting organized, gathering in the square by tweeter with #ayaktaduranadam. And then it told about us getting under custody. I told them that we weren’t gathered by tweeter and that we didn’t even know each other and I refused to sign. Also the friends there rejected signing. One of us was 17 years old, I think that person might have signed I am not sure. Then we were released. We wasted about 2-3 hours and we were tried to be scared I think.
By the way I work freelance in Today’s Zaman newspaper. I would also like to point that out. I am not an artist, architecture or art director. I am doing masters degree in Cultural Management. I write/report about culture and art.
Source: radikal.com.tr
18 June 2013
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