Ramallah - The Palestinian Center for Development and Media Freedoms "MADA" condemns the attack on the journalist Rewaa Ahmad Morshed by "field control officers" while she and two of her colleagues were carrying out a filming session on agricultural land in the Juhr Al-Deek area in the Gaza Strip.

Journalist Morshed stated that she, along with two of her colleagues, went on Sunday afternoon (4/25/2021) to one of the farms in Juhr al-Dik in order to hold an outdoor filming session. During their work, two armed persons with military uniforms from "field control" arrived at the site and questioned them about their identities and what they were doing, and whether they knew that the area is a security zone.

Morshed informed them that she did not know that because she had obtained permission from the owner of the land and that her colleague had come to the place the previous week and conducted a field photo tour in the place. The officers asked for her and her two colleagues' work cards. While she was introducing herself as a journalist, one of the officers tried to silence her and described her as an "apostate" and that he is not honored to discuss anything with her because of her clothing, and ordered her to shut up. Then they went about 50 meters away with the journalists cards, and called the women police. Morshed added.

Meanwhile, the journalist, Morshed, called a person in the Ministry of Interior in Gaza, who told her that he will intervene to solve the issue. After a while, the two officers returned the cards to the journalists, but one of them continued to direct his speech to the journalist Morshed "in a disrespectful language" as she described it. When she asked him about whether he was speaking to her, he grabbed a tree branch and struck her several times on "sensitive places" of her body, causing her to go to Al Shifa’ hospital.

For its part, the Ministry of Interior in the Gaza Strip said yesterday that it had opened an investigation into the attack on journalist Morshed after she received a complaint in this regard.

The Palestinian Center for Development and Media Freedoms "MADA", looks very seriously at the attack on the journalist Morshed, which was not limited to infringing the freedom of media work and prevented her and her colleagues from doing their work freely, but also seriously affected her right to dignity and personal freedom. MADA demands the competent authorities in the Gaza Strip to immediately start an investigation into this attack, to publicize its results as soon as possible, and to hold the perpetrators accountable.