CDFJ emphasises need for action against crimes targeting journalists

AMMAN — Centre for Defending Freedom of Journalists (CDFJ) stressed the importance of joint efforts to prevent impunity for crimes committed against journalists.

CDFJ said that the United Nations proclaimed the second of November of every year a reminder of the need for solidarity to bring all those who commit crimes against journalists to justice, according to a CDFJ statement. 

The Centre stated that the real test of the credibility of these slogans is immediate action to prevent the crimes committed by the Israeli occupation against journalists since the beginning of its aggression against Gaza.

CDFJ considered the world’s silence about these crimes an unjustified complicity, and continuing without a decisive position puts them in the accusation of being accomplices in the crime, the statement said. 

Moreover, the Centre stressed that the lives and safety of journalists are important everywhere, and considered what is happening in Palestine a crime unprecedented in the history of journalism.

CDFJ reminded that the number of martyrs of the press in Palestine since October 7 is 25 journalists, and 13 media workers were also martyred, according the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate.

Further, the Centre pointed out that there are two journalists that have been reported missing, and 18 journalists who were arrested by the Israeli occupation forces in the West Bank, in addition to the destruction of more than 35 homes for journalists and their families in Gaza, more than 50 media headquarters were destroyed, and more than 20 journalists were injured.

CDFJ called on the United Nations to take urgent action to protect journalists, and to address Israeli crimes that violate international humanitarian law, and have always gone unpunished, the statement concluded.