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Monday, May 23, 2022

Israel out to stop media



Israel out to stop media


Portraits of Palestinian Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh are seen at an art exhibition honouring her in Jenin city in the occupied West Bank, on Thursday. AFP PIC


LETTERS: Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh was a leading media voice since the intifada (uprising) in Palestine in 2000.

For more than two decades, she reported on human rights abuses in the occupied territories.

She wrote with anguish at the 74-year old genocide in Palestine and the Western world's indifference to the dehumanisation and brutalisation of the Muslim and Christian population there.

But on May 11 this year, her voice was silenced forever when she was shot and killed while reporting on an Israeli raid on a Palestinian house in the West Bank city of Jenin.

Much sorrow has been expressed about her killing.

We, the members of the International Movement for a Just World (JUST), in solidarity with the global outcry against her assassination, wish to add our condemnation of her execution.

To be silent would amount to complicity with the atrocity of her killing and the inhuman treatment meted out to her in death by the belligerent behaviour of the Israeli forces at her funeral.

As the casket was being carried to the Christian cemetery, Israeli police attacked the mourners with batons and stun grenades, almost causing the pallbearers to drop the coffin.

For such killings to cease, a high-level independent and international investigation is called for.

Besides Shireen's killing, the aggression against Palestinian journalists must also be investigated.

The International Federation of Journalists filed a complaint against Israel with the International Criminal Court in April.

Shireen's killing follows the fourth anniversary of the death of Palestinian journalist Ahmed Abu Hussein, who also fell victim to an Israeli sniper while covering the Great March of Return in 2018.

A bleak reminder of this type of systematic aggression against journalists comes from Reporters Without Borders, which records the number of journalists killed while covering the plight of the Palestinians.


The number of killings is more than 40 since 2000. This is despite the protection afforded to journalists by international humanitarian law.

We note with sorrow that though international organisations have voiced condemnation about Shireen's killing, there is deafening silence from certain states that preach about human rights to the rest of the world.

We wish to stand in solidarity with the family, friends, colleagues and the people to whom Shireen lent her voice.

Though global attention is focused on the Russia-Ukraine war, the world needs to recast its attention to the violence in the West Bank.

Shireen's assassination underlies the systemic violence against civilians, and Israel's aggression against anyone reporting these crimes.

Preventing the media from conducting its duty is one of the messages behind this atrocity.

PROFESSOR DR SHAD SALEEM FARUQI

Vice-president, JUST International

DR JASPAL KAUR

Assistant secretary-general, JUST International

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