10 Apr 12 | Middle East and North Africa
Two arrests linked to Facebook posts critical of the Palestinian Authority (PA) have spurred a variety of human rights and media freedom groups to call on the PA to stop harassing their critics.
On Wednesday 28 March, Palestinian Preventative Security Forces detained lecturer Ismat Abdul-Khaleq “after they read a quote on her Facebook page accusing President Mahmoud Abbas of being a traitor and demanding he resigns,” lawyer Issam Abdeen of the Palestinian rights group al-Haq told the Associated Press.
Defaming a public official is illegal in the West Bank. As happened in the recent case of detained journalist Yousef Al Shayeb, Abdul-Khaleq was told that she will be held for two weeks while the Public Prosecutor’s office “searches for evidence”. According to the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz, she is being held in solitary confinement.
On Sunday 1 April, journalist Tariq Khamis was arrested after discussing Abdul-Khaleq’s arrest on Facebook. Khamis told the website Electronic Intifada that he believed his arrest was connected to an article he wrote about youth groups that were critical of the authorities. He told Reuters that during his three-hour interrogation, “I was questioned on my work as a journalist, and they confiscated the files on my laptop.” He added “the authorities are afraid of journalism.”
Human Rights Watch, the Committee to Protect Journalists, Al-Haq and Reporteurs Sans Frontieres have all expressed their concern at the way critical voices are being targeted and detained by the PA.
The authorities emphasise that the judiciary and the government are two separate entities, but criticism of the authorities can result in incursions by security and judicial sources. Adnan Dmeiri, the spokesman of the security services which detained and questioned both Abdul-Khaleq and Khamis, claims “freedom of expression stops at defamation”. Yet his following statement, that “any citizen can respond to insults and baseless accusations with a lawsuit” does not hold true. Due process has not been followed and citizens are detained by the state while government bodies search for evidence against them. Even if Abdul-Khaleq, Khamis or even Yousef Al Shayeb are never formally charged, a message has been sent to PA’s critics in order to intimidate them. Its actions undermine its efforts to present themselves as a democratic body in a bid for further recognition and foreign investment.
Ruth Michaelson is a freelance journalist based in Ramallah. Follow her on Twitter @_Ms_R
05 Apr 12 | Middle East and North Africa
Journalist Yousef Al Shayeb, detained by the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank town of Ramallah, was released on bail on Monday “pending investigation” after eight days of incarceration. Al Shayeb began a hunger strike “in the name of press freedom” three days in, after a court renewed his detention order for a further 15 days. His release is seen as being due to the success of his fellow journalists in publicising the case, especially following fresh efforts by the Attorney General to prevent his release on Tuesday.
Al Shayeb is accused of “slander and defamation” and was held while the authorities “searched for evidence” to support the charges brought against him. These accusations came from two government officials: the Foreign Minister Riyad Malki and the head of the Palestinian Diplomatic Mission to France. A conviction for defamation of a public official could result in Al Shayeb imprisonment for two years, and the damages sought by the Minister and the Head of the Mission total 6 million USD.
It is the circumstances surrounding Al Shayeb’s incarceration that present increasingly damning evidence against the Palestinian Authority, who have targeted Al Shayeb and his employer, the Jordanian Al Ghad newspaper, following a story he published in January. The article in question “accused Palestinian Authority deputy ambassador Safwat Ibraghit in Paris of recruiting Arab students to spy on Islamic groups in France and abroad, and sharing that information with both Palestinian and foreign intelligence agencies,” according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), who proclaimed their outrage in a report on Wednesday. The article also accused the Director of the Palestinian National Fund Abu Nabil, the head of the Palestinian Diplomatic Mission Hael al-Fahoum of corruptly promoting Ibraghit to his post, and the Foreign Minister Riyad Malki of covering up the entire scandal.
According to the CPJ as well as local media sources, the Palestinian Authority also pressured Al Ghad, resulting in them firing Al Shayeb shortly after he was first questioned in January; he had worked for the paper for a decade. Al Shayeb has also come under pressure to reveal his sources, but has maintained his journalistic right to protect them following his initial arrest and questioning in January. The Palestinian Centre for Development and Media Freedoms has stressed that under Palestinian law, no journalist is required to reveal their sources unless the subject is considered a matter “of national security” or they are required to do so by a court order.
In an effort to correct the negative reports written about them following Al Shayeb’s arrest and hunger strike, the Palestinian Authority have made themselves look unfamiliar with the concept of a free press. The Foreign Minister told local news agency Ma’an that journalists had reacted “emotionally” to the arrest of their colleague, and that they should be willing to hear both sides of the story, as then they would understand who the true victims were. He also maintained that Al Shayeb knowingly published “falsehoods” in the report, but failed to explain why this would be grounds for arrest and detention. On Wednesday, the cabinet issued a communiqué following its weekly meeting which stated it “continues to protect journalists’ rights to work freely”, yet also asked journalists “to maintain professional standards, particularly on public affairs issues.”
Such attitudes seem likely to further increase public dissatisfaction with the body. In a pole on the Ma’an website, an overwhelming majority of 84.9 per cent of responses responded to the question “PA detention of journalists for libel accusation is primarily a failure of?” with “The PA’s ability to tolerate criticism.” Al Shayeb’s arrest also came at the same time as the authority announced, without irony, that it would be issuing a press freedom award. Many journalists as well as the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate have subsequently said that they will boycott the award in light of recent events.
Ruth Michaelson is a freelance journalist based in Ramallah. Follow her on Twitter @_Ms_R
05 Mar 12 | Index Index, Middle East and North Africa, minipost
Israeli troops have stormed two Palestinian TV stations, seizing equipment and forcing them to close. In the early hours of 29 February, members of Israel Defence Forces (IDF) raided Al-Wattan and Al-Quds Educational TV in the West Bank, territory controlled by the Palestinian Authority. During the raid on Al-Wattan, four members of staff were held for several hours, whilst 21 computers and live broadcasting equipment were taken, along with administrative files and official documents. Broadcasting equipment was also seized from Al-Quds Educational TV. The IDF said the raids were carried out because the “pirate” TV stations were broadcasting without a licence.
05 Mar 12 | Middle East and North Africa
Two Ramallah-based TV stations were raided by Israel Defence Forces (IDF) troops at the behest of the Israeli Ministry of Communications in the early hours of Wednesday morning.
Wattan TV station director Moammar Orabi described how the channel’s offices were entered at 2am by 30 soldiers. Their broadcast equipment, computers and administrative files were seized and four of their employees detained. All four, comprising two correspondents, one graphics technician and the head of production, were released a few hours later.
Wattan TV, owned by a group of three NGOs including the Palestinian Medical Relief Society, is a well-known leftwing channel, and frequently broadcasts coverage of the weekly protests that occur across the West Bank which often incur violent crackdowns by the IDF.
Orabi told AFP just after the raid: “it was a surprise. We still don’t know why they confiscated the equipment and shut down the station, even though we work in areas belonging to the Palestinian Authority and we have a licence from them.”
The IDF also confirmed that educational broadcaster Al-Quds TV was raided at 3am local time and had their equipment confiscated. Among the material broadcast by Al-Quds TV is Sharaa Simsim, the Palestinian version of “Sesame Street”. Neither station has been able to operate since the raid.
After pressure from a variety of news outlets including AFP and Reuters to explain the reasons behind the raids, an IDF spokeswoman later stated that both the channels, which broadcast exclusively in the West Bank, were “broadcasting illegally” as they use frequencies which she claimed “interfered with aircraft communication” at nearby Ben Gurion airport according to local news agency Ma’an.
However, Suleiman Zuheiri, Undersecretary of the Palestinian Ministry of Telecommunication in Ramallah, told Ma’an that “civil aviation waves, according to international parameters, start at 120 megahertz, while TV frequencies start at above 500 megahertz.”
The Palestinian Ministry of Telecommunication had never been informed that either station had been broadcasting potentially “disruptive” signals, and the Israeli Ministry of Communication had failed to give any advance warning that they intended to close the channels.
Furthermore, Zuheiri also underlined that both stations are registered at the International Telecommunications Union, implying they could not be broadcasting illegally.
The Palestinian Authority said on Wednesday that this action could signal the beginning of a “frequency war” with Israel. The Minister for Telecommunication and Information Technology, Abu Dakka, spoke out at a press conference in Ramallah on Thursday 1 March. Dakka said he felt that the Israeli government had conducted the raids with the express aim of seizing these frequencies for 3G and 4G phones that use the frequencies to get a television signal. In an interview with Palestine radio, his Undersecretary, Zuhairi, went further and emphasised that the recipients of the frequencies are the settlements in the West Bank, who want to receive Israeli broadcast services.
Reporters Without Borders also expressed their “deep shock” at the raid on Friday 3 March: “These arbitrary and illegal operations served yet again to intimidate Palestinian media and journalists, the victims of repeated attacks by the Israel Defense Forces. We urge the Israeli military to return the confiscated equipment and allow the two stations to resume broadcasting.”
