ICSPR Starts An International Campaign to Expose The Israeli Violations Against Journalists and Media Companies
The International Commission to Support Palestinian Rights lunched a campaign in collaboration with journalist institutions and some international and local figures to expose the Israeli Occupation Forces violation against Palestinian journalists and journalist institutions. ICSPR tries to apply the international law tools in order to protect the Palestinian journalists.
ICSPR with the Forum of the Palestinian Journalists submitted a motion to the United Nation (UN) office in the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt) and the High Commissioner for Human Rights (HCHR), Mr Zaid Ben Ra’ad. Mr Tariq Mokhamer, the UN human right Representative in Gaza, received the motion, which includes the Israeli violations against Palestinian Journalists. These violations are part of many dangerous violations committed against the Palestinian people. Although the international law and Fourth Geneva Convention guarantee the right of free presswork especially in conflict areas, 33 journalists are destine in Israeli jails in attention to monitoring 469 violations since the beginning of 2017.
The motion carries some demands to the HCHR to intervene immediately to put pressure on the Israeli occupation and to take all possible procedures to stop all these violations and free all the detained journalists. It is also important to guarantee applying the international conventions to protect right to free speech and presswork. The motion also calls upon the international parties to take all the procedures to bring those who committee crimes against the Palestinian journalists to justice and move seriously to guarantee respecting the international conventions. The motion also call upon the Human Right Council to form a fact-finding commission to investigates in all the violations against human rights in (oPt).
On Sunday, 15 October 2017, ICSP sent another motion to the Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression, David Kaye, calling for his immediate intervention to halt the violations against the Palestinian journalists and journalist institutions.
The motion exposed in details the violations against the Palestinian journalists and journalist institutions committed within the past 10 months in 2017 based on the legal mandate of the Special Rapporteur, which was determined in accordance with the mandate given to him from the Human Right Council regulations and laws.
It is worth mentioning that 33 journalists were detained by the Israeli Occupation Forces, including 10 with actual sentences, 18 pending sentences, and 5 administrative detentions. The last journalist Mohammed Shukri Awad, 30 years who is detained without specifying the detention duration. From the beginning of 2017, there were 469 violations, detention of 75 journalists, the most recent of whom were Amir Abu Aram and Ala Al-Titi. The detention of 74 journalists was extended, the latest was the extension in detaining journalist Ragheed Tabisa twice after his arrest last month. Journalists were also denied to cover more than 39 times, 16 media institutions were closed. 78 institutions were stormed, raided and destroyed, 10 journalists were banning from traveling, 45 journalists were subject to torture in prisons.
