The Palestinian Center for Development and Media Freedoms -MADA- asked the Human Rights Council to take legal steps regarding the Israeli crimes committed against Palestinian journalists to exert more efforts to follow up these Israeli violations.
MADA added that the Israeli occupation must abide by the international law and respect human rights specifically those relating to freedom of press and expression of opinion.
This was revealed yesterday at MADA Center speech at the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva while participating in the 40th regular session of the Council under item 7 of the occupied Palestinian and Arab territories, which concentrated on the systematic Israeli attacks against journalists and media in Palestine and its ongoing escalation.
MADA noted in its oral statement that an average of 21 Israeli violations were committed against Palestinian journalists per month. However, in 2018 there was an escalation in the number of violations, which reached 38 violations each month; the hardest of which was the murder of two journalists (Yasser Murtaja and Ahmed Abu Hussein) by the Israeli occupation while they were performing their media work in covering the Great March of Return eastern of the Gaza Strip.
This is in addition to the increasing number of arrests and detention of Palestinian journalists, where the number of cases increased to 41 compared to 33 cases in the previous year.
MADA also stressed that the Palestinian journalists’ rights are still vulnerable to Israeli violations, and so far, there are no deterrent measures to enable them to practice their work freely.
MADA Center had delivered oral statements in the Human Rights Council about media freedoms in Palestine and the continuing Israeli attacks on press freedom, since it was granted a special consultative status at the ECOSOC in April 2016.
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