[News] UN Experts Call on Israel to End Campaign Targeting Palestinian HRDs in the oPt and within Its Borders

[Anti-Imperialist News]

addameer.org <https://www.addameer.org/news/4472> UN Experts Call on Israel
to End Campaign Targeting Palestinian HRDs in the oPt and within Its Borders
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22-08-2021

On 19 August 2021,* United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of
human rights defender Mary Lawlor* issued a statement
<https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=27375&LangID=E>
concerning Israel’s escalating crackdown against human rights defenders
across the occupied Palestinian territory.[1] The statement addressed
multiple prominent cases of arbitrary arrests, harassment, criminalization,
and threats against human rights defenders in the oPt, and followed recent
submissions to the working group by Addameer Prisoner Support and Human
Rights Association and the Palestinian Human Rights Council, on behalf of Salah
Hammouri <https://www.addameer.org/news/4440> and Shatha Odeh
<https://www.addameer.org/news/4469>.

Salah Hammouri, a Palestinian-French human rights defender and lawyer at
Addameer, risks the revocation of his permanent residency in Jerusalem
following Israeli Interior Minister Ayelet Shaked’s announcement to move
forth with such recommendations based on a “breach of allegiance.” The
proposed revocation, cited by Mary Lawlor, comes amid continued Israeli
harassment against Mr. Hammouri and his family, including previous
arbitrary arrests, a travel ban from entering the West Bank, and the
deportation of his wife, Elsa Lefort, a French national.

Ms. Lawlor further denounced the arbitrary detention of Shatha Odeh,
General Director of the Health Work Committee (HWC), Juana Ruiz Sánchez,
and Tayseer Abu Sharbak, “I am shocked that members of the Health Work
Committee, who provide health services to Palestinians living in remote
areas of the West Bank, were arrested, interrogated and may be criminalized
because of their human rights work.” In the statement, she called for the
“release of all three human rights defenders immediately,” as well as an
investigation into allegations of ill-treatment.

Shatha Odeh’s health is extremely compromised, wherein she suffers from
numerous chronic illnesses, has been subjected to ill-treatment, and denied
access to many of her medications. Juana Ruiz Sánchez
<https://www.frontlinedefenders.org/en/case/ongoing-harassments-against-juana-ruiz-s%C3%A1nchez-health-work-committee>
has been detained since 13 April 2021 and was placed in solitary
confinement. The most recent detention of Shatha Odeh serves as the latest
escalation of attacks by Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) against the HWC,
and more broadly, Palestinian civil society and human rights defenders.

In outlining the increasingly perilous conditions for human rights
defenders, the statement further cites the arbitrary arrest and detention
of Farid Al-Atrash, a human rights defender and lawyer at the Independent
Commission for Human Rights (ICHR), along with the arrest and interrogation
of human rights defenders Muna Al-Kurd, Mohammed Al-Kurd and Zuhair Al
Rajabi, who continue to protest the forced expulsion of Palestinians from
the Sheikh Jarrah and Silwan neighborhoods of Jerusalem.

Addameer reaffirms the UN experts’ call against the harassment, targeting,
and arrests of Palestinian human rights defenders by the Israeli occupation
regime, including the call for the immediate release of detained human
rights defenders Shatha Odeh, Juana Ruiz Sánchez, and Tayseer Abu Sharbak.

Addameer further calls for the cessation of all practices and policies
intended to intimidate and silence human rights defenders, in violation of
their right to freedom of expression, including through arbitrary
detention, torture and other ill-treatment, institutionalized hate speech
and incitement, residency revocation, deportations, and other coercive or
punitive measures.

*Read the full statement on the United Nations Human Rights Office of the
High Commissioner website **here*
<https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=27375&LangID=E>
*.*

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[1] The call was further endorsed by UN Human Rights experts including
Michael Lynk, *Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the
Palestinian Territory occupied since 1967*; Melissa Upreti, Dorothy
Estrada-Tanck, Elizabeth Broderick, Ivana Radačić, Meskerem Geset from
the *Working
Group on discrimination against women and girls*; Reem Alsalem, *Special
Rapporteur on violence against women, its causes and consequences*; Tlaleng
Mofokeng, *Special Rapporteur on the right of everyone to the enjoyment of
the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health*; and Clément
Nyaletsossi Voule, *Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful
assembly and of association*.
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