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Protest crackdowns, banned marches, media workers at risk — a UN expert on Friday accused Western nations and Israel of freedom of speech violations in the year since the Gaza war broke out.
“No conflict in recent times has threatened freedom of expression so seriously or so far beyond its borders than Gaza,” UN special rapporteur Irene Khan told reporters as she presented her report, “Global threats to freedom of expression arising from the conflict in Gaza.”
The Bangladeshi human rights lawyer, who has been the special rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression since 2020, notably cited crackdowns on pro-Palestinian protests in Western democracies in the early months of the war.
On US university campuses, protests were “harshly” repressed, she said, alluding to the use of riot police to dislodge encampments.
In Europe, she noted that Germany had imposed a ban on pro-Palestinian demonstrations last October, with some restrictions still in place on such protests in various Germans regions, but “never on any pro-Israeli” rallies.
“There have been all sorts of other restrictions also made in terms of slogans or scarves and so on,” she said.
France attempted a similar blanket ban last year but was stymied by courts, and now makes assessments on a case-by-case basis, she said, noting Belgium and Canada have similar approaches.
She also pointed to “targeted assassinations of journalists” in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.
“We all know the deliberate killing of a journalist is a war crime,” she said, lamenting the “impunity” with which such deaths have been met in the recent conflict and years prior.
The killing of journalists, destruction of press facilities, denying access to international media, banning Al Jazeera, and other actions by Israel, “seem to indicate the strategy of the Israeli authorities to silence critical journalism and obstruct documentation of possible international crimes,” she said.
Hamas sparked the war in Gaza by staging the deadliest-ever attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, resulting in the deaths of 1,206 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of official Israeli figures.
During the attack, militants took 251 hostages back into Gaza. Ninety-seven remain there, including 34 who Israeli officials say are dead.
Israel’s campaign to crush Hamas and bring back the hostages has killed 42,500 people in Gaza, the majority civilians, according to data from the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory, figures which the UN considers reliable.
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