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On Sunday, international advocacy group Human Rights Watch said that Palestinian Authorities are yet to take action and investigate on an assault by Palestinian security forces in April, having brought charges against the four victims.
The organization said that several witness had given consistent accounts of police using disproportionate and unnecessary force against two men involved in a peaceful protest in a theater in the city Ramallah in West Bank. Two other men and a woman trying to help them were also dealt with the same way, the organization said. The four men were arrested and charged with “disturbing the peace” and “provoking a riot” the next day, before being ordered to appear in court on May 28th.
The deputy Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch, Joe Stork, said that it is “absurd that the Palestinian justice system is prosecuting the victims of police brutality rather than their attackers” and that “Palestine should start living up to its human rights obligations by exonerating the victims and holding the police to account”.
“There was no apparent justification for Palestinian police to violently repress the protest at the Kasaba theater,” Stork said. “Foreign donors should make it clear that their support for the Palestinian police will not continue without accountability for such abuses.”
Human Rights Watch added that the men’s arrest and prosecution is in direct contradiction to their right to freedom of expression and assembly.
Palestine on April 2nd had agreed to core international human rights conventions which oblige the government to protect, respect and fulfill the right to freedom of expression and assembly, and investigate and punish the abuse of these rights by security forces. Palestine’s civil police forces in West Bank received training from and are supported by the European Union program EUPOL-COPPS. This is not the first time they have been pulled up for the use of excessive force in Ramallah, having been called up on the issue by the Palestinian Authority and the Human Rights Watch in August 2012.