Rights Group Blasts Palestinians for ‘Arbitrary’ Arrests (AUDIO INTERVIEW)

Amnesty International’s Saleh Higazi tells The Media Line that despite the timing, the authorities have ‘no need’ for a pandemic to ‘stifle dissent’

Amnesty International, the human rights group, has slammed the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, and Hamas in the Gaza Strip. According to an Amnesty report issued this week, they have “arbitrarily detained critics” during the coronavirus pandemic.

The report documents the cases of five individuals.

“All were arrested during the state of emergency which the Palestinian authorities, both in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, put in place to address the COVID-19 pandemic at the beginning of March,” it says. “In one case, the criticism directly related to the authorities’ response to the COVID-19 crisis; in the other cases, it did not.”

To learn more, The Media Line spoke with Saleh Higazi, Amnesty’s deputy director for the Middle East and North Africa, who said the Palestinians “do not need to declare a state of emergency to stifle dissent. They have been doing it, and they continue to do it now.”