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I personally know the value of freedom of expression and I have paid a heavy price for it in my life. I was thrown in prison in 1976 simply because Turkish authorities did not like what I wrote and said about democratic rights and the rights of Kurdish people. The government, the judicial system and law enforcement authorities held tremendous power in Turkey, while I was a mere citizen, a young student at the time; next to them, I was a nobody and freedom of expression was just some words written on paper.
Later, I became the target of a hate campaign here in the US organized by extreme nationalists from Turkey because they did not like my scholarly work on the Armenian Genocide. I was not only threatened with death but I was also physically assaulted in New York in 2006 and had to be protected by campus police. I was detained at the Canadian border in February 2007 because those who did not like what I had to say on the Armenian genocide vandalized my Wikipedia web-page and portrayed me as an “enemy of Turkey and a terrorist.” Letters have been sent to universities to cancel my lectures when I have been invited to speak and in some of those cases university officials were intimidated.
full: http://hgmsblog.weebly.com/blog/taner-akcam-cancels-visit-to-university-of-illinois-because-of-salaita-boycott
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