UN rights expert urges action after ‘outrageous’ killing of Al Jazeera journalists
Irene Khan, the UN special rapporteur on freedom of expression, slammed Israel’s latest killing of Al Jazeera’s journalists, saying it was “absolutely outrageous”.
The Israeli army starts “a smear campaign [against Anas al-Sharif, claiming] he’s part of Hamas and so on, and then that journalist gets killed,” Khan told Al Jazeera.
Al-Sharif was killed “with prior warnings, with hints”, but with “no evidence, ever, put forward that he was anything but a journalist,” Khan said.
Israel must allow the international media in to verify what is happening, she added.
Khan said “everything” unfolding in Gaza right now amounts to “genocide”.
“People are dying now, journalists are being silenced through assassination … children are starving to death,” Khan said. “Immediate action must be taken by the powerful governments who are friends with Israel.”
If Israel had evidence to support al-Sharif allegations, it would release it: UN official
Irene Khan, the UN special rapporteur on freedom of expression, said that Israel killed Anas al-Sharif over his work as a journalist and that Israeli claims he was a Hamas member are totally unsubstantiated.
“If they had real evidence [of this], do you not think that they would put it out, up front, right away in the international arena? Of course they would. But why are they not doing that? Because they don’t have that evidence,” she told Al Jazeera.
“They simply [say] that any journalist who is reporting on Gaza must be a ‘Hamas member’, just as anyone who criticises Israel has to be ‘anti-Semitic’.
“That’s the way that Israel silences the world from criticising them or holding them to account.”
