Ref: 05/2006

Date:  10 February 2006

PCHR and Front Line Launch Report on Human Rights Defenders in Palestine

PCHR and Front Line, the International Foundation for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders,  today launched a joint report on the situation of human rights defenders in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.

The report examines killings, injury, arbitrary detention and arrest of human rights defenders over the past five years caused by both the Israeli military and by forces with links to the Palestinian National Authority.

The report recommends, among other things, that Israel stop treating human rights defenders as terrorists and lifts the regime of checkpoints, closures and curfews which has imposed a siege across the OPT and prevented defenders from carrying out their work.

It also calls for the release of a number of human rights defenders including al Haq fieldworker Ziyad Hmeidan who has been held without charge by Israeli authorities since July 2005.

Front Line and PCHR are also calling on the PNA to bring the perpetrators of kidnappings of international human rights defenders in the Gaza Strip to justice as part of a general policy to restore law and order and protect defenders.

The full report is available at ” Front Line Palestine: Killings, Arbitrary Detention, Restrictions on Movement, Threats, Harassment and Other Forms of Intimidation of Human Rights Defenders in the Occupied Palestinian Territory February 2006 (PDF) “