WEST BANK (Dispatches) – African journalists have called on the African Union and governments to condemn the Zionist regime’s deliberate targeting of journalists and news media organizations and hold the occupying regime legally accountable for crimes committed against media workers during its recent attacks on the Gaza Strip and elsewhere in occupied Palestine.
African governments were urged “to stand on the right side of history” by unequivocally condemning the human rights violations committed by the Israeli government. The search for permanent solutions, said FAJ President Sadiq Ibrahim Ahmed, required governmental interventions.
In a two-day African Journalists Leadership Conference which took place in Accra, Ghana, earlier this month and which was held less than a week after the occupying regime ended its brutal bombing campaign of the besieged Gaza Strip where it destroyed a building that housed the Associated Press news agency and several other media outlets, the Federation of African Journalists (FAJ) condemned the “total impunity” the regime enjoyed in its killing of journalists and destruction of media offices “under the bogus pretext of self-defense.”
FAJ also pledged to renew its solidarity with Palestinian journalists and their union, the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate (PJS), saying it fully supports demands made by the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) to protect and obtain justice for Palestinian journalists.
The destruction of the al-Jalaa building during the 11-day offensive on the Gaza Strip was widely regarded as a brazen attempt to silence journalists covering the regime’s military attacks.
Earlier this month, Zionist troops assaulted Al Jazeera journalist Givara Budeiri during her arrest and destroyed equipment belonging to Al Jazeera cameraman Nabil Mazzawi.
Budeiri was reporting on a sit-in marking the 54th anniversary of the Naksa (setback), a term Palestinians use to describe the regime’s occupation of East al-Quds, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in 1967.
According to Reporters Without Borders, at least 14 Palestinian journalists have been arrested and placed in the so-called administrative detention by Zionist troops in recent weeks.
Administrative detention is a sort of imprisonment without trial or charge that allows the regime to incarcerate Palestinians for up to six months, extendable for an infinite number of times.
Some prisoners have been held in administrative detention for up to 11 years without any charges brought against them.