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Palestinian Authority Faces Criticism for Escalating Campaign Against Journalists

by TheTower.org Staff |

The Palestinian Authority and the Fatah faction that controls it are facing mounting human rights criticism after a West Bank court upheld a one-year prison sentence for a Bethlehem journalist convicted of defaming PA President Mahmoud Abbas. Mamdouh Hamamreh posted the photo of Abbas to Facebook in 2010, alongside the image of a villain from a television show about French colonialism in the region. The villain plays an informer. The caption that Hamamreh posted with the photo read “they’re alike,” the implication being that Abbas is a Palestinian traitor.

Hamamreh worked for the Hamas-controlled Al-Quds TV station, and the incident will be read by foreign policy analysts as another blow in the ongoing and potentially escalating battle between Fatah and its rival Hamas faction. More immediately however, it has mobilized human rights groups in protest of what is seen as an escalating campaign by Fatah in general, and Abbas specifically, against journalists.

Concerns over Fatah’s suppression of dissent go back years. In 2011, Human Rights Watch blasted PA officials alongside their Hamas rivals:

Severe harassment by Palestinian Authority and Hamas security forces targeting Palestinian journalists in the West Bank and Gaza has had a pronounced chilling effect on freedom of expression, Human Rights Watch said today. In a new report, Human Rights Watch called on Palestinian authorities in the West Bank and Gaza to hold their security forces to account for systematic, severe abuses and urged foreign donors to the Palestinian Authority (PA) to condition aid to security forces on concrete accountability measures.

The 35-page report, “No News is Good News: Abuses Against Journalists by Palestinian Security Forces,” documents cases in which security forces tortured, beat, and arbitrarily detained journalists, confiscated their equipment, and barred them from leaving the West Bank and Gaza.

Recent events indicate that Palestinian officials have done the opposite of tempering their anti-journalist campaigns. Earlier this month, PA officials arrested a journalist for having ties to Al Jazeera. The Palestinian Ministry of Information has also recently imposed new registration restrictions on journalists working in their areas.

[Photo: Al Jazeera English / Wiki Commons]

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