It's not THIS bad here....

At Least 40 Killed in Rioting by Turkish Fundamentalists
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Associated Press - 07/02/93

At least 40 people were killed and scores were injured Friday
when rampaging Muslim fundamentalist extremists set fire to a
hotel in the Turkish city of Sivas, state TV said.

The rampage was the worst outburst so far of fundamentalist violence
in Turkey, a Muslim nation with a secular government.

Most of the victims died of smoke inhalation when the fundamentalists
torched a hotel hosting left-wing writers and intellectuals in Sivas,
275 miles east of Ankara.

State TV said the rioters were angered by the alleged atheism of
the writers, who were commemorating a 16th-century poet hanged for
his defiance of Ottoman oppression.

HBB, a private TV station, said 145 people were injured in the attack.

The rioters emerged from several mosques after Friday prayers and broke
through police barricades to reach the hotel in Sivas. They threatened
to lynch the writers, then set the building on fire, witnesses said.

Policemen fired over the rioters' heads to try to disperse them, but
some managed to reach the hotel's upper floors. Police prevented them
from reaching the room of Aziz Nesin, a prominent leftist author and
the fundamentalists' main target.

Turkish fundamentalists have killed several secular writers and
professors in bomb attacks, and Turkish officials have accused Iran
of involvement in the violence.

The main target of Friday's riot appeared to be Nesin, editor of the
daily Aydinlik newspaper.

Nesin praised Pir Sultan Abdal, the 16th-century bard who preached
rebellion against oppression, in a speech Thursday.

The rioting fundamentalists accused Nesin of spreading atheism through
his speech.

His newspaper touched off riots in Istanbul in May by publishing
excerpts from The Satanic Verses, the novel by Salman Rushdie.

Rushdie is under an Iranian death sentence for writing the book, which
Iran calls blasphemous.

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* What warped people!  Am I wrong here, or did these people actually
riot in FAVOR OF OPPRESSION AND DENIAL OF SELF EXPRESSION?!