20/02/2013 (Agence Europe) - Hannes Swoboda's call for human rights. On Monday 18 February, the leader of the S&D Group, Hannes Swoboda, called on the Turkish government to change its approach to human rights immediately, and to work with all the political forces in Turkey to reform the penal code, to amend the anti-terrorism law and to conform to the European Convention on Human Rights. “The current penal code and anti-terrorism law still have articles that can easily be misused to turn ideas into crimes. Any truly democratic system that believes in freedom of expression aims to take precautions against those who threaten violence - not against those who speak their minds.” Swoboda thus called for charges against the composer Fazil Say, who has been prosecuted for “undermining the values of Islam”, to be dropped. In April 2012, Say said he was atheist and made fun of an imam on the social network Twitter. (CG/transl.fl)