2019-03-25

Gaza Strip

Gaza

Seven Civil Society Organizations Set Up a Crises Unit Confronting the Violations against Activists of "We Want to Live" Movement in Gaza

With the initiative of MUSAWA- The Palestinian Center for the Independence of the Judiciary and the Legal Profession, seven civil society organizations decided to set up a crises unit to take on the daily monitoring of the violations against the citizens’ rights to peaceful assemblies and expression of opinions through the people’s movement “We Want to Live”, and to stop all kinds of physical assaults, unlawful detaining, and referring civilians to the military judiciary (Citizens, Journalists, Lawyers) for supporting freedom of expression or demanding human rights. The decision was the outcome of a meeting held at MUSAWA’s office in Gaza on 20/3/2019, with the participation of representatives of the Monitoring of Human Rights Violations’ Unit in the Palestinian Bar’s Association, The Brilliant Tomorrow Association, the Palestinian Consultative Staff, the Journalists Rights Advocating Association, the Palestinian General Union of People with Disabilities, the Palestinian Crescent Authority for Relief and Development, in addition to MUSAWA and a number of lawyers and human rights activists. During the meeting, the violations monitored by the participant organizations, which more than 300 detainees were subjected to, were reviewed, in addition to physical attacks against 36 journalists, and 25 violent disruption of public assemblies, not to mention tens of summonses issued by the military judiciary against civilians, and preventing the families of the detainees and prisoners and the representatives of the civil society organizations from visiting detainees, noting that seven of the civil society organizations were physically attacked, detained and suspended. The violations also include preventing the hospitals from granting the casualties medical reports showing their injury and its causes, the imposition of high fines on detained children as a condition for releasing them, and the increase of the conflict-affected as it now includes professors, college students, lawyers, and public figures.

The meeting agreed on a number of procedures to be taken in the context of a crises unit, which is going to be responsible of monitoring the violations and guaranteeing the citizens’ rights and freedoms, including their right to electronic documentation of violations, organizing solidarity stands, issuing position papers concerning the violations and following them up with the official bodies, which in their turn are responsible for ensuring the citizens’ rights to be prosecuted before regular judiciary, and guaranteeing the fair trial guarantees, holding the attackers accountable, releasing the detainees, and intensifying the communications and follow-up campaigns with both the regular and military judiciaries, the Ministry of the Interior, the Attorney General, the Legislative Council’s members, and both the executive and political officials, including the representative of parties, and political and social powers, to induce them to pressure on relevant actors to ensure the immediate release of all detainees, obligate the Ministry of Health and hospitals to provide all the victims with medical reports explaining their health status and the reasons of their causality, in addition to seek accountability for perpetrators of the verbal and physical violations, to compensate the victims, to enlarge the membership of the crises unit through communicating with other civil society organizations, to demand the president to adopt the Declaration on Palestinian Human Rights Defenders- PHRDs, to put an end for the militarizing of police and the conflict of jurisdiction between the military prosecution and the civilian prosecution in order to endure prosecuting civilians before their regular courts. The meeting agreed on combating torture and activating the mechanisms of monitoring over security services and the accountability mechanism against anyone who commits the crime of torture or affecting the human dignity of citizens.