18 May 2021
Call for immediate ceasefire
Attack on media offices in Gaza is war crime – SAFMA Sri Lanka
The Sri Lanka Chapter of the South Asian Free Media Association (SAFMA) expresses its shock and revulsion at the deliberate targeting and destruction of offices of news media in the Gaza Strip by Israeli military units. SAFMA Sri Lanka, which comprises socially concerned professional journalists, unreservedly condemns this attack on an important civilian information service facility at a time of war when public information has extra importance in ensuring human safety.
SAFMA notes that the Al-Jalaa building in central Gaza that was destroyed on Saturday housed both civilian residents as well as the Gaza branch offices of the US-based Associated Press (AP) and Qatar-based Al Jazeera. The fact that the Israeli military authorities warned the building owners and also the news agencies concerned of the impending attack, ostensibly in order to save lives, clearly indicates that this attack on a civilian structure was a deliberate military action. In destroying this vital public informational facility, the Israeli military thereby denies the Gaza population the prompt public information system that is most needed for human safety in a time of war. Thus, the ostensible attempt to save lives in the course of the attack is negated several fold by the consequent denial of life-saving public information services during the on-going military operations.
As a body of professional journalists who have reported on counter-insurgency operations and the war in Sri Lanka, SAFMA sees this military action by the Israeli armed forces as a War Crime and, calls on the world community, especially the United Nations, to swiftly investigate this incident and bring the perpetrators to justice.
SAFMA also calls on the world community to enforce prevailing United Nations Resolutions and other mechanisms to ensure the complete halt to illegal Israeli settlement expansion activities that have been the principal provocations of unrest among the Palestinian population. The arbitrary, forcible, eviction of Palestinian residents and displacement from home sites has been a pattern of oppression repeated over seven decades of Israel’s military occupation of the Palestinian homeland. It is perpetrated by the government in Tel Aviv in total violation of general international laws of human rights, rules governing military occupations and, also violates the numerous United Nations Resolutions expressly prohibiting the settling of Israelis on lands belonging to Palestinians or otherwise used by the indigenous Palestinian population.
