Ramallah- 15/06/2021 The Palestinian Center for Development and Media Freedoms (MADA) launched a media campaign against the arrests of Palestinian journalists by the Israeli occupation forces under the slogan "Journalists' arrests are a tool to hide the truth". The campaign aims to shed light on the arrests of journalists in Palestine and the danger of these arrests on freedom of the press, which increases in the most sensitive times, when frictions take place between Palestinian citizens and the occupation authorities, in order to obscure the truth and silence its voice. The campaign also aims to mobilize international pressure on the occupation authorities to stop arrests of journalists, especially administrative detention.
MADA Center launched this campaign after the outbreak of the situation in all the Palestinian territories as a result of the brutal attacks by the occupation forces since mid-April, against all the Palestinians especially journalists in the Jerusalem area, Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood and Al-Aqsa Mosque. Which led to the arrest of many Jerusalem journalists during their field coverage of events, such as Guevara Al-Budairi, Mona Al-Kurd, and Wahbi Makiya.
Launching this campaign at the present time is an urgent necessity in order to deepen understanding at the local and international levels of one of the most severe violations committed against Palestinian media professionals, as arrests constituted 10% (169) of all Israeli violations against media freedoms during the past five years.
This campaign funded by the Open Society Foundations (OSF) comes within a long series of activities implemented by the Center to stop attacks on journalists at various times and under all circumstances, the last of which was during the Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip and the attacks in the city of Jerusalem, where the number of violations reached 122 during the past month In the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the most severe was the killing of journalist Youssef Abu Hussein. The campaign, which will last for a month, will include many publications on social media, in addition to issuing a report on the arrests of journalists during the last five years.
