More than 20 foreign journalists were arrested by Israeli forces after a humanitarian convoy bound for the Gaza Strip was intercepted on 1 and 2 October. Reporters Without Borders (RSF) demands the immediate release of these media professionals: their arrest constitutes a serious violation of the right to inform and be informed.
At around 6 p.m. on 1 October, Israeli naval forces intercepted the first ship of the “Global Sumud Flotilla” humanitarian convoy en route to Gaza to break the Israeli blockade of the Strip. This illegal Israeli military operation in international waters marked the beginning of a series of interceptions at sea. The latest occurred in the territorial waters of Gaza, where a ship was reportedly stopped about 15 kilometres off the coast at the end of the day on 2 October.
According to RSF, a total of around 20 international journalists were on board to cover the civilian mission — which involved 42 ships — including journalists from the Spanish daily newspaper El País; the Qatari news channel Al-Jazeera; the Italian public broadcaster RAI, the French communist daily L'Humanité, and the Turkish public broadcaster TRT.
Since the first arrests on the evening of 1 October, the various newsrooms have had no news of their journalists. “Émilien Urbach made a final attempt to contact us at 3:06 a.m. [on the night of 1 to 2 October] via the ship’s tracker, and then nothing,” a L’Humanité editor told RSF. Like the other media professionals arrested by Israeli forces, the journalist is believed to be held at the port of Ashdod, halfway between the city of Tel Aviv in Israel and the Gaza Strip, where all those on board the Global Sumud Flotilla ships were transferred.
“Arresting journalists and preventing them from doing their work is a serious violation of the right to inform and be informed. RSF condemns the illegal arrest of the news professionals who were on board these ships to cover a humanitarian operation of unprecedented scale. The Israeli army, which has killed over 210 Palestinian journalists in the Gaza Strip, is continuing its media blockade of the Gaza Strip with these illegal arrests at sea, with the obvious goal of covering up the crimes it is committing against the Palestinian population. RSF urges Israel to respect the status of journalists, protect them and guarantee their safety in accordance with international law.”
On 8 June, the Israeli authorities illegally arrested two journalists, Omar Faiad of the Qatari channel Al-Jazeera and Yanis Mhamdi of the French news website Blast, aboard the Madleen flotilla. Released on bail, Omar Faiad was held for more than 24 hours and Yanis Mhamdi for eight days.
[The article was edited on 3 October to remove the mention of TeleSUR. The Spanish-language newsrooms represented are El País, Descifrando la Guerra, and Público.]
