Human Rights Defenders' Views on bianet

Human rights defenders who assessed the work of bianet in its 10^th year agreed, "bianet should be read by an even broader audience, it should monitor even more cases and should become even more prevalent".

bianet talked to the President of the Turkish Human Rights Foundation (TİHV), Şebnem Korur Fincancı, and to the President of the Human Rights Foundation (İHD), Öztürk Türkdoğan.

"bianet means the truth about human rights"

Şebnem Korur Fincancı: In my opinion, bianet says the truth in the field of human rights. bianet is a source of information that cannot be obtained otherwise, particularly related to the topic of human rights violations.

Throughout the past ten years, bianet showed that it can crucially influence the public opinion by presenting information to the public that was not covered by other news before. We also observed an increase of the people's sensitivity when they read the news. An alternative concept of media has been established within the public opinion, an understanding of free, independent and true journalism including news that are not covered by other media organizations.

I think we should ensure that bianet will be followed by the people in a more widespread manner. We have to think about what we can do for that.

"bianet raises awareness for human rights"

Öztürk Türkdoğan: bianet especially reflects the situation regarding human rights, provides according information and publishes statements of human rights defenders - this is very important for us. In this aspect, bianet can be seen as a news site for the human rights community. It is substantive and valuable. The bianet news enable the development of a conscience and concept of human rights.

We always had a deficit in terms of human rights. bianet contributes with their view on incidents and facts through the perspective of human rights and by interpreting these facts in their news that way. Turkey has not been familiarized with this concept for long. Even the İHD has been working for 24 years now. It is very important to view the facts under the perspective of human rights.

bianet has to continue along those lines. I wish bianet an even wider audience and that it will reach an even larger group of readers. (TK/VK)