Journalists are calling for a Palestinian Authority court decision to close 49 websites and social media pages to be overturned, with activists saying it appeared to be aimed at silencing critics.
A PA court in the West Bank ordered the sites, most of them Palestinian, blocked on the grounds they were threats to “national security and peace.”
International press freedom group Reporters Without Borders (RSF) says the order includes news sites with millions of Facebook followers, such as the Quds Network.
A lawyer for the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate, Alaa Freijat, tells AFP the court decision that came at the request of the attorney general was being appealed.
A picture taken on October 23, 2019, shows a Palestinian man holding a cell phone displaying the message “this website is not accessible,” at an office in the city of Hebron in the West Bank, following a Ramallah court’s ruling to block access to dozens of websites. (HAZEM BADER / AFP)
Mohammed al-Laham of the journalists’ union says that neither the PA’s information ministry nor the syndicate had been consulted in advance. He says dozens of journalists took part in a demonstration this afternoon, chanting, “Hands off of freedom of the press.”
A PA spokesman, Ibrahim Melhem, backed the journalists, calling on “the relevant authorities and the attorney general to overturn the decision.”
— AFP
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