PARIS: The European Court of Human Rights ruled Thursday that France violated the freedom of expression of pro-Palestinian activists who were convicted for campaigning against Israeli goods.
The court ordered the French government to pay 101,000 euros ($115,000) in overall damages to a group of 11 activists. The global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement hailed the court’s decision as a major victory.
The protesters, led by French activist Jean-Michel Baldassi, were convicted of incitement to economic discrimination after taking part in a 2009 demonstration at a hypermarket in the eastern French town of Illzach and handing out leaflets calling for a boycott of Israeli products. France’s top court upheld the conviction.
But the European human rights court found that the criminal conviction “had no relevant and sufficient grounds” and violated the freedom of expression of the protesters. The court is based in the French city of Strasbourg, and countries that signed the European Convention on Human Rights – including France — are bound by its rulings.
“This momentous court ruling is a decisive victory for freedom of expression, for human rights defenders, and for the BDS movement for Palestinian freedom, justice and equality,” Rita Ahmad from the Palestinian-led BDS movement said in a statement.
BDS activists say other governments have also tried to use discrimination laws to unfairly target them as the movement has grown in global popularity. The movement urges boycotts, divestment and sanctions against Israeli businesses, universities and cultural institutions. Supporters say it uses nonviolence to resist unjust policies toward Palestinians.
Israel says the movement masks its motives to delegitimize or destroy the Jewish state and has called for a tougher European response to BDS activities, citing anti-Semitic attacks in western Europe in recent years. German lawmakers approved a resolution last year describing the BDS movement’s methods as anti-Semitic and reminiscent of Nazi-era calls to boycott Jews.
In the French case, the human rights court described the protesters’ actions as a form of political expression and a subject of public interest. It noted that Article 10 of the human rights charter, which guarantees freedom of expression, allows for such protest action as long as it doesn’t “cross the line and turn into a call for violence, hatred or intolerance.”
The French government has three months to appeal the decision, but did not immediately comment Thursday.
Amnesty International expressed hope that the ruling would “send a clear message to all European states that they must stop the prosecution of peaceful activists.”
European court backs pro-Palestinian BDS protest movement
https://arab.news/pekyf
European court backs pro-Palestinian BDS protest movement
- The court ordered the French government to pay 101,000 euros ($115,000) in overall damages to a group of 11 activists
- The movement urges boycotts, divestment and sanctions against Israeli businesses, universities and cultural institutions
Villagers massacred in South Sudan food aid trap
- Civilians killed after being lured from homes with promise of aid, witnesses say
NAIROBI: More than a dozen civilians were killed after being lured from their homes by fighters allied to South Sudan’s government under the pretense of being registered for humanitarian food aid, according to two people who survived the attack.
The killings took place on Saturday morning in the village of Pankor, in Ayod county, in the conflict-hit Jonglei state, about 400km north of the capital, Juba.
Women and children were among the victims.
HIGHLIGHTS
• The two survivors said that 22 people were killed and several more were injured. • Photos showed bodies of women and young men, some with their hands bound behind their backs, who appear to have been shot at close range.
Several dozen fighters arrived in pickup trucks and announced over a loudspeaker that they had come to register residents for food assistance, said the two survivors.
“They gathered them in a luak,” said one witness, referring to a traditional mud hut used to house cattle.
“People were thinking they would get aid or some help.”
The fighters then bound the hands of several men and opened fire on the group.
The two survivors said that 22 people were killed and several more were injured.
The government-appointed county commissioner said 16 people were killed.
Photos showed bodies of women and young men, some with their hands bound behind their backs, who appear to have been shot at close range.
The images, which were shared with AP by an opposition representative, are too graphic to publish.
Makuach Muot, 34, traveled to Pankor on Sunday for the funerals of eight relatives.
Most of the village’s residents had fled fighting months earlier, he said, leaving behind mainly elderly people and young children.
Army spokesman Maj. Gen. Lul Ruai Koang could not be reached for comment.
James Chuol Jiek, the government-appointed county commissioner of Ayod, confirmed that more than a dozen people, mostly women and children, had been killed in the attack.
He said the gunmen belonged to the Agwelek militia, a force drawn from the Shilluk ethnic group that has not been fully integrated into the national army but that has been deeply involved in recent military operations.
Jiek said the fighters had left their barracks overnight without their commander’s knowledge.
He said they told him the killings were revenge for attacks by a Nuer militia on Shilluk villages in 2022, during which hundreds of civilians were killed or abducted.
The government county commissioner condemned the killings and said that several officers had been arrested and that the army had disarmed 150 fighters from the battalion involved.
He disputed that people had been lured out for an aid registration. “This is an opposition lie,” he said.
In January, Agwelek militia commander Lt. Gen. Johnson Olony was filmed ordering his forces to kill civilians during military operations in Jonglei state. “Spare no lives,” he said.
“When we arrive there, don’t spare an elderly, don’t spare a chicken, don’t spare a house or anything.”
His remarks drew widespread rebuke from the UN and others. Olony has since apologized.
Armed clashes, aerial bombardments, and years of extreme flooding have left more than half of Ayod county’s population facing severe food insecurity.
Ayod county lies in northern Jonglei state, an opposition stronghold and a flashpoint in renewed fighting that the UN estimates displaced 280,000people since December.
Aid groups have warned that access restrictions to opposition-held parts of the state were endangering civilian lives.
Residents of northern Jonglei are overwhelmingly from the Nuer ethnic group of suspended vice president and opposition leader Riek Machar.
Opposition officials have repeatedly called the government’s actions in Nuer areas of the country “genocidal.”
Reath Tang Muoch, a senior official in the SPLM-IO, called Olony’s remarks “an early indicator of genocidal intent.”
