We, the undersigned, laureates of the Franco-German Prize for Human Rights and the Rule of Law, feel deep disappointment at the positions and statements of the German and French governments regarding the Israeli attack on civilians in Gaza. The ongoing bloodshed, which we witness and document as human rights defenders and journalists, is a glaring manifestation of the erosion of human rights and the rule of law, which you celebrated and for whose championing you awarded us your prize.<\/p>\n
Our role as human rights defenders involves telling governments that respect for international human rights law and international humanitarian law, including the protection of civilians during armed conflicts, is essential to preserving lives and avoiding further escalation of conflicts. Giving blank cheques to the Israeli government in its military operations in Gaza is interpreted as a green light for it to commit more war crimes and crimes against humanity, and possibly genocide, against the Palestinian population in Gaza.<\/p>\n
We are aware of the historically rooted pro-Israel positions that your governments have taken time and again, but just as everything about this war is unprecedented, so are your positions, which have completely ignored what is happening to Palestinians and have made 2.2 million people in Gaza simply invisible.<\/p>\n
We are disturbed, and we can only imagine that you too believe that these human beings in Gaza are lesser human beings, and perhaps this belief even extends to Arabs as a whole.<\/p>\n
We have long been told that your governments and your history gave birth to the universality of human rights, and today we ask: how does supporting the targeting and killing of civilians in Gaza fit with the universality of these rights? Is the destruction of a city’s infrastructure by an occupying power (Israel is an occupier of Gaza and the West Bank under international law) consistent with human rights and humanitarian law? Is seeking to forcibly displace hundreds of thousands from their homes not a crime against humanity? Is turning a blind eye to the prevention of humanitarian aid from reaching the besieged population of Gaza not turning a blind eye to collective punishment? And before this whole war began, was the humiliating siege of Gaza, the expansion of Israeli settlements on occupied Palestinian territory (again, under international law) or the clear denial of Palestinians’ right to statehood consistent with your understanding of human rights? Or are Palestinians excluded from the category of humanity altogether?<\/p>\n
These are not rhetorical questions. In fact, they reflect a history that allows us to realise that the current Israeli aggression cannot be reduced to a response to the Hamas attacks of 7 October; rather, the current war is the result of a systematic denial of human rights under occupation for decades. It does not even require a commitment to human rights to understand how this war began; this is rather a historical and political understanding.<\/p>\n
Let us move away from our region for a moment and go to your cities, Paris, Berlin and others. Banning and attacking demonstrators while they exercise their right to peaceful assembly and demonstrate in solidarity with Palestinians undermines your unconditional championing of freedom of expression and gives repressive regimes excuses to violate rights at home.<\/p>\n
Perhaps at a moment of extreme violence such as this, governments do not have the patience to think about human rights, but even if your unbalanced position is consistent with your political interests, we wonder whether you have paused for a moment to think not only of the 2.2 million people in Gaza (minus more than 7,000 people killed at the time of sending this letter, more than half of them women and children), or the 3 million Palestinians in the West Bank, or the 6 million Palestinian refugees spread across the rest of the world, but also of the 465 million people living in Arabic-speaking countries, and in the Global South.<\/p>\n
These are the millions of people who have been alienated and deeply angered by your unconditional support for an Israeli government determined to commit the most serious violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law, and we do not know how many human rights prizes and years of diplomacy can correct this position.<\/p>\n
As powerful governments, your unconditional support for Israel in waging this war must be replaced by rapid action with other governments for an immediate ceasefire. Until this happens, we ask: what little space remains for human rights in our conversations? And what political relations do you wish to continue to build with pro-democracy activists, human rights defenders and journalists in our region of the world?<\/p>\n
We are angry, sad and tired.<\/p>\n
Yours faithfully,<\/p>\n
| Signatories<\/td>\n | Country<\/td>\n | Year of the prize<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n |
| Ragia Omran<\/td>\n | Egypt<\/td>\n | 2017<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n |
| Abdullah Al-Khonaini<\/td>\n | Kuwait<\/td>\n | 2017<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n |
| Mohamed Lotfy<\/td>\n | Egypt<\/td>\n | 2018<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n |
| El Nadeem Center<\/td>\n | Egypt<\/td>\n | 2019<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n |
| Azza Soliman<\/td>\n | Egypt<\/td>\n | 2020<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n |
| Zoya Rouhana<\/td>\n | Lebanon<\/td>\n | 2020<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n |
| Issam Younis<\/td>\n | Palestine<\/td>\n | 2020<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n |
| Lina Attalah<\/td>\n | Egypt<\/td>\n | 2022<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n |
| Hadeel Abdel Aziz<\/td>\n | Jordan<\/td>\n | 2022<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n |
| Sama Aweidah<\/td>\n | Palestine<\/td>\n | 2022<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Laureates of the Franco-German Prize for Human Rights in five Arab countries wrote to the French and German ambassadors condemning their stance on Gaza.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":4549,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[390],"tags":[18549,18550,18548,18543,18417,18545,18546,18547,18544,4747],"kateb":[710],"class_list":["post-18035","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-human-rights","tag-azza-soliman","tag-double-standards-on-human-rights","tag-el-nadeem-center","tag-franco-german-prize-for-human-rights-and-the-rule-of-law","tag-gaza-war-2023","tag-human-rights-defenders-in-the-arab-world","tag-lina-attalah","tag-mohamed-lotfy","tag-open-letter-to-france-and-germany-on-gaza","tag-ragia-omran","kateb-zawia3-com"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/1_36.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18035","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18035"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18035\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18036,"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18035\/revisions\/18036"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4549"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18035"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18035"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18035"},{"taxonomy":"kateb","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/kateb?post=18035"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}} |