Rise in Attacks, Detentions by Palestinian Security Services

[Ian David]

West Bank/Gaza: Stop Harassing Journalists
Rise in Attacks, Detentions by Palestinian Security Services

(Ramallah) - Severe harassment by Palestinian Authority and Hamas security forces targeting Palestinian journalists in the West Bank and Gaza has had a pronounced chilling effect on freedom of expression, Human Rights Watch said today. In a new report, Human Rights Watch called on Palestinian authorities in the West Bank and Gaza to hold their security forces to account for systematic, severe abuses and urged foreign donors to the Palestinian Authority (PA) to condition aid to security forces on concrete accountability measures.

The 35-page report, "No News is Good News: Abuses Against Journalists by Palestinian Security Forces," documents cases in which security forces tortured, beat, and arbitrarily detained journalists, confiscated their equipment, and barred them from leaving the West Bank and Gaza. http://www.hrw.org/node/97792

"Palestinian security forces are becoming notorious for assaulting and intimidating journalists who are just trying to do their jobs," said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. "Both the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza need to end these blatant attacks on free expression."

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In recent days, Hamas internal security services have repeatedly violated the rights of journalists covering popular demonstrations in Gaza against the political split between Hamas and the Fatah-led PA, Human Rights Watch said. For example, journalists told Human Rights Watch that on March 19, 2011, around 15 Hamas plainclothes security forces raided the offices of the Reuters news agency bureau in Gaza, smashed computers, and beat journalists, after pointing a gun at one of them and threatening to throw another out of a window. In another case, a reporter for the Al Quds radio station told Human Rights Watch that on March 27 Hamas police threatened, insulted, and detained him for more than an hour immediately after he had broadcast a report criticizing Hamas health officials. Security forces accosted him in a morgue where he had reported on a man, supposedly killed by an Israeli military attack, who was discovered still to be alive.

More:
http://www.hrw.org/news/2011/04/06/west-bankgaza-stop-harassing-journalists