A Turkish judge arrested 16 members of a migration monitoring group, including co-chairs, who’d been detained on 3 June.

The prosecutor’s office reportedly accuses the members of the Migration Monitoring Association (Göç-İz) of ‘providing funds for an illegal organisation’ through its activities including publication of reports, books and brochures.

The association members are also accused over the contents of three books, consisting of studies on the rights violations suffered by non-Muslims, and particularly by Kurds who were forced out of their villages by the Turkish military during the 1990s, and by those who were forcibly evacuated from their homes in Kurdish-majority cities and districts during the armed conflicts in 2015-16.

Details on the case remain unclear as a confidentiality order was issued by the chief public prosecutor’s office.

The Migration Monitoring Association was established in Istanbul in 2016 with the aim of contributing to building solidarity among groups of people who were subjected to migration in general and to forced migration in particular, and to advocate for the rights of victims of migration.