The long-awaited court case against Kurdish satellite TV station Roj TV has started and will determine whether the station can continue broadcasting out of Denmark.
According to the Danish prosecution, Roj TV is acting as a mouthpiece for the separatist group Kurdistan Worker's Party (PKK) – considered a terrorist organisation by the US, UK, EU and Turkey. Roj TV is being charged under Danish anti-terror legislation for promoting terrorist activities.
Flashback:
The Turkish government has been lobbying Denmark to revoke Roj TV's broadcasting license for several years, with the decision by Denmark to press ahead revealed as being a reward for supporting the appointment of Anders Fogh Rasmussen as NATO Secretary General in 2009.
Until his nomination for NATO, Rasmussen had been defending Roj TV by emphasizing press freedom. When Turkey let Rasmussen be the new NATO secretary general after initially vetoed his nomination, the Danish government suddenly changed his stance and started to prosecute Roj TV swiftly.
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Flash-forward to a couple of weeks ago:
NATO bombed the Libyan television headquarters in Tripoli early on July 30. "Three of our colleges were murdered and 15 injured while performing their professional duty as Libyan journalists," Khaled Basilia of Al-Jamahiriya television had said.
Earlier, NATO in Brussels announced it had carried out precision strikes on three Libyan television transmitters to silence "terror broadcasts" by Moamer Kadhafi’s regime.
"A few hours ago, NATO conducted a precision air strike that disabled three ground-based Libyan state TV satellite transmission dishes in Tripoli... with the intent of degrading Kadhafi’s use of satellite television as a means to intimidate the Libyan people and incite acts of violence against them," a statement said.
So Rasmussen's NATO could bomb a Libyan TV, but Rasmussen's Denmark couldn't legally ban PKK's TV, although there are no doubts that both of these stations incite acts of violence, whether you call it terror or not.
Ironically, the Libyan government is still considered as a legitimate entity according to international law, like they were when several European leaders were in line to shake hands with Moamer Kadhafi just a year ago.
The PKK, on the other hand, is a terrorist organisation according to the vast majority of the international public.
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Such stories reveal that political relativity is universal. Freedoms and rights are essential neither in the West, nor the Middle East nor anywhere else in today's world. As British Prime Minister David Cameron's latest suggestion to curb Facebook and other social media platforms has also demonstrated, it depends on conditions:
Any political leader of any modern state can be a tyrant like Moamer Kadhafi, when the conditions are met and when the price is paid. And with similar terms, democratic leaders like Barack Obama or Nicholas Sarkozy may still line up to shake hands with tyrants like Saudi Arabian King Abdullah, the leader of probably the most oppressive, the most brutal internationally-legitimate regime in the world, who may indeed be hanged or prosecuted one day .
So don't fall for their principles and ideals.
Don't fall for the spectacle.
