Amnesty slams Palestinians’ freedom-of-expression arrests

Amnesty International censures Palestinian authorities in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip for detaining critics and opponents for expressing their views.

The London-based human rights group says five people were arrested in March and April, including a peace activist for holding a video call with Israelis and a writer who criticized authorities in Gaza for a deadly market fire. Amnesty calls the detentions a “pattern of arbitrary arrests” of Palestinians for voicing their opinions.

“The authorities in both the West Bank and Gaza Strip have violated the right to freedom of expression by arbitrarily detaining individuals solely for peacefully sharing their views on social media. This must immediately stop,” says Saleh Higazi, deputy Middle East director at Amnesty International.

The group, which criticizes both the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority and Hamas in Gaza, calls for all those who were arrested for expressing their views to be released.

The arrests happened during states of emergency imposed in both territories over the coronavirus outbreak, and Amnesty says the detentions during a pandemic “puts these individuals at an increased risk.”

In the West Bank, one of the detainees is a former member of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah party who criticized the Palestinian leader. A second detainee had also slammed Abbas’s response to the COVID-19 crisis. Both were later released.

In Gaza, which has been run by Hamas since the Islamic terror group routed pro-Abbas forces in 2007, authorities detained three Palestinians on different charges. Among them is a writer who hinted in a Facebook post at Hamas’s responsibility for a market fire that killed over 20 Palestinians in March. A second is a cartoonist who criticized the detention of the writer. Both were released.

Rami Aman, a Palestinian peace activist who was arrested for organizing a video conference call with dozens of Israelis, remains in Hamas custody.

— AP