JOINT APPEAL FROM AL-MEZAN CENTER FOR HUMAN RIGHTS AND THE PALESTINIAN INDEPENDENT COMMISSION FOR CITIZEN’S RIGHTS.
The Destruction of Palestinian Civil Society, PRESS RELEASE/02-04-02
The Destruction of Palestinian Civil Society
PRESS RELEASE/02-04-02
JOINT APPEAL FROM AL-MEZAN CENTER FOR HUMAN RIGHTS AND THE PALESTINIAN INDEPENDENT COMMISSION FOR CITIZEN’S RIGHTS.
This is not a War against Terror. It is a War against Palestine .
Israeli sources claim that the goal of their current
military policy is to destroy the “terrorist infrastructure” in the Palestinian
territories, beginning with Ramallah and other cities in the West Bank.
We wish to expose this as disinformation designed to justify Israeli actions
against Palestinian civil society.
There is increasing evidence that Israel intends
to wipe out the records of Palestinian social and political institutions:
The Ramallah office of the Palestinian Independent Commission on Citizen’s
Rights (PICCR) has been ransacked and files have been stolen or destroyed.
The full extent of the damage is not yet known. It should be noted that
the PICCR is a national human rights organization.
Other offices raided or destroyed include the Ramallah
office of Al-Haq, an independent human rights organization; the Ramallah
branch office of the United Nations High Commission for Human Rights; the
Palestinian Medical Relief Union, and the Mandela Institution. In addition,
the Palestine Agricultural Relief Committees office has been occupied.
These politically independent offices have come
under attack in order to destroy the Palestinian civilian infrastructure
of the city, to destroy the records of civic organizations that have documented
human rights breaches by the Israeli Occupation Forces, and to undermine
Palestinian civil society in general. The aim here is to pave the way for
the re-imposition of full Israeli military and civil administration in
the Palestinian territories.
We call upon global civil society to intervene to
stop these grave breaches of international law and violations of human
rights. Silence in the face of these crimes amounts to complicity. We ask
all people of conscience to take immediate action against what is happening.
This is not a War against Terror; it is a War against Palestine .
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