2020-06-29

Gaza

Gaza / position paper

MUSAWA's Memo on the Use of Excessive Force by Police While Enforcing a Judicial Ruling

His Excellency Attorney General, Mr. Diaa Al-Deen Al-Madhoun,

Subject: The Results of MUSAWA’s Investigation into the Police Use of Excessive Force While Enforcing a Judicial Ruling

MUSAWA- The Palestinian Center for the Independence of the Judiciary and the Legal Profession extends its warmest greetings to your Excellency, noting that the center has recently commissioned a team of legal professionals to visit the third block of Al-Breij Refugee Camp to hold several interviews and heat the testimonies of those involved in the incident of Wishah Family, which came up with the following findings: 

The Facts of the Incident:

1. On Wednesday 6/6/2020, a judicial police force, led by its commander ......, headed to Deir Al-Balah City, exactly to Block (3) in Al-Bureij camp, to enforce a judicial ruling issued by the Deir Al-Balah Magistrate Court, which provides for reopening the Wishah Family Street as shown in the municipality’s maps and removing the illegally erected buildings. The police only removed the west-room owned by the Wishah family within about an hour and left the site safely. 
2. On the following morning of Thursday 19/6/2020, the Wishah family filed a request with the same court to interpret its ruling. In its turn, the court responded by issuing an interpretative resolution, which clarified that the decision is intended to remove all illegal buildings built on all sides of the street and return it to its original image as shown in the Municipal maps.
3. On the same day that the court's interpretative decision was issued, a judicial police force of one hundred members headed to the Wishah family Street, although it is known to everyone that on Thursdays the street becomes more crowded than usual due to the Thursday market. The force emptied the street from the carts and damaged them, and forced shop owners to enter their stores and close them down, paving the way for the force members, who wore protective glass shields and armed themselves with sticks and batons, which were used clear the crowd out, resulting in the injury of some citizens.
4. The police reinforced its force with two additional forces, bringing the number of its members to approximately 300, which led to an increase in the number of the crowds, including members of the Wishah family. Mr. Jabr Wishah was arrested upon the arrival of the force and was detained at the police station for approximately three hours with a number of the family members, what prompted a group of family women to go out to the street in an attempt to prevent the arrest of their sons, including the elderly woman Um Jabr Wishah, which resulted in the injury of four women from the family and other citizens.
5. The police uprooted some trees and gas cylinders belonging to the family in the western part of the street, and the force left without removing all other encroachments from the east, the north, and the south in accordance with the court's interpretative decision.
6. The Judicial Police of Deir El-Ballah did not choose the appropriate time to execute the judicial ruling, especially after Thursday's incident and the excessive use of force backed by additional forces to disperse the crowd, which resulted in injuring some citizens, whose names are documented by MUSAWA’s team. 
7. The failure to implement the judicial ruling in a comprehensive manner and to eliminate all violations by all sides has increased the sense of discrimination, loss of confidence in the judicial decision, and deteriorating respect for the implementation of judicial decisions, which violates the rule of law and encourages the taking of the law into one’s own hands.
8. Had the human dignity of the citizens been respected in such an incident, they would have offered law enforcement facilities, stemming from their awareness and confidence in the security personnel. Instead, the failure to provide this guarantee resulted in public anger.
9. The arrest and detention campaigns that were launched before completing the execution of the judicial ruling have resulted in an indirect assault of a group of women present in the place, which has aroused the ire of the people who received the news through the media and social networking sites, while we need to unite against the plans of annexation and Judaization that beset our homeland.
10. MUSAWA pursued the official authorities’ statements on the incident, which have not included any guarantees of implementing accountability and prosecution mechanisms regarding police and security agencies' abuse of their duties and excessive use of force. This may be interpreted as a violation of the right of civil society organizations and media institutions, which have initiated their professional duty, and put the relationship between official and private institutions into further decline, thereby affecting the principle of participation guaranteed under article 26 of the Basic Law.

Therefore, we ask you as the competent authority to conduct the investigation into the incident, to announce its results, to take the necessary measures against those responsible and those who violated the rule of law administratively and criminally, and to provide us with a response to this memorandum duly.

With All Due Respect

Issued on 29/6/2020

Attachments: 

MUSAWA’s Field Inquiry Report 

MUSAWA