The United States-based persecution advocacy nonprofit In Defense of Christians says its website, employees’ social media accounts and email accounts were hacked Thursday by someone they have good reason to believe was acting “for or on behalf of the Turkish government.”
“Our website was taken down and a Turkish flag periodically appeared on the website for several hours while staff email accounts and private social media accounts were compromised and, in a few cases, altered,” IDC Executive Director Philippe Nassif said during a news conference Friday at the organization’s office.
“We find this behavior unacceptable and that it only further demonstrates Turkey’s intolerance of freedom of speech and dissidence.”
The cyber attack came the day after IDC, which was founded four years ago with the purpose of advocating for religious freedom in the Middle East, and two other rights groups hosted a Capitol Hill briefing focusing on the human rights violations being committed by the NATO ally. Two senators, Democrat Chris Coons of Delaware and Republican Thom Tillis of North Carolina spoke at the briefing, as well as experts on the region.
“The briefing specifically examined how President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan continues to deny genocide, freedom of speech, and jailing American citizens such as Pastor [Andrew] Brunson and other political dissidents, all while oppressing religious minorities,” Nassif explained. “IDC condemns this petty cyber attack coming from a U.S. ally and NATO member. Unfortunately, this behavior reflects a pattern from the Turkish government as evidenced by the silencing of dissidents inside Turkey and the illegal attacks on American citizens last year who were demonstrating against Erdoğan in Washington, D.C.”
According to IDC, it’s website went down at about 10:30 a.m. Thursday. The worst of the attack occurred until about 12:30 p.m.
Click here to read more.
Source: Christian Post
BCNN1 WP 