VICE blacks out websites in #FreeRasool campaign

ISTANBUL

The international news organization VICE blacked out all of its digital and social channels for two hours on Oct. 21 in a move to show support for one of its journalists who has been under detention in Turkey for two months.

“Today, at 10 a.m. EST and ending at 12 p.m. EST, every homepage on all of VICE’s digital channels globally, nearly 100 in total, will be blacked out to call for the release of detained journalist Mohammed Rasool, who was imprisoned by the Turkish authorities while on assignment for VICE News nearly two months ago,” Vice Media said in a statement.

VICE also published a video and a Change.org petition, in cooperation with the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), link in its blacked out webpages to help secure Rasool’s release.

Rasool, along with two VICE News journalists, Phil Pendlebury and Jake Hanrahan, were arrested by police on charges of assisting a terrorist organization on Aug. 27 while they were reporting on clashes between police and members of the Patriotic Revolutionary Youth Movement (YDG-H), the youth wing of the the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), in the southeastern province of Diyarbakır. 

Pendlebury and Hanrahan were released on Sept. 3, but Rasool remains in detention.