The Danish-based Kurdish TV station Roj-TV was late yesterday charged with the promotion of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) terror group - a charge that follows a lengthy investigation into the station and could result in its transmission license being revoked.
Roj-TV broadcasts in Kurdish from Denmark. Earlier this year its Danish CEO stepped down and immediately told the press about the station’s links to the PKK, an organisation that is on both the EU and the US’s terror lists.
Although the authorities had been monitoring Roj-TV for five years, a thorough investigation of the accusations was launched and yesterday Lars Barfoed, the minister of justice, confirmed that he has charged the station.
Roj-TV has been accused of on several occasions transmitting TV programmes with interviews with PKK sympathisers and leaders, and also running biased reports on talks between Kurdish and Turkish authorities that would appear to promote the PKK.
Roj-TV launched in March 2004 and is headquartered just outside Copenhagen. Via a tower in Belgium, its programmes are broadcasted to 78 countries around the world. The programmes are in Kurdish, Arabic, Turkish, Persian and Assyrian.
