Torture used to quash dissent, rights group says
West Bank — Security forces of the rival Palestinian governments routinely use torture and arbitrary arrests, among other tactics, to quash dissent by peaceful activists and political opponents, Human Rights Watch said Tuesday.
The charges came in a new report released by the New York-based watchdog, following a two-year investigation that included interviews with nearly 150 people, many of them ex-detainees. It accused both the Western-backed Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and the Islamic militant Hamas in Gaza of using “machineries of repression” to stifle criticism.
Human Rights Watch also said the systematic use of torture could amount to a crime against humanity under the U.N.s’ Convention against Torture, and called on countries that provide funding to Palestinian law enforcement to susees pend their assistance.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ government joined the convention after Palestine was accepted as a nonmember state at the United Nations.
“Palestinian authorities have gained only limited power in the West Bank and Gaza, but yet, where they have autonomy, they have developed parallel police states,” said Tom Porteous, deputy program director at Human Rights Watch.
Among the alleged abuses: whipping people’s feet, forcing detainTRAMALLAH, into painful stress positions, hoisting up people’s arms behind their backs with rope and coercing suspects into granting access to their mobile phones and social media accounts.
The group’s director for Israel and the Palestinian territories, Omar Shakir, said the Palestinian Authority detained 220 Palestinians without charge or trial for their social media posts, including 65 university students and two journalists.