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Amnesty Declares Days Of Mourning, Sends High-Level Delegation To Mideast
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Amnesty
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By Ayesha Ahmad, IOL Washington Correspondent
WASHINGTON, April 28 (IslamOnline) – On the first of two days that Amnesty International has declared “international days of mourning” for the innocent victims on both sides of the Middle East conflict – holding vigils across the United States and in other countries in solidarity with the victims and humanitarian workers who are trying to help civilians – an investigative delegation including Amnesty’s secretary-general Irene Khan arrived in Jerusalem on Saturday afternoon.
The London-based human rights watchdog has already sent a delegation to Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories; that delegation held a press conference on April 22, stating that they found “credible evidence” that Israeli soldiers failed to give warning to civilians before attacking, failed to allow humanitarian assistance into Jenin for thirteen days, mistreated prisoners and used excessive lethal force, among other allegations.
This weekend’s delegation will travel to Jenin Sunday – the same day the U.N. fact-finding mission was to arrive in Jenin before being cancelled due to Israeli refusal to cooperate – to visit victims and the non-governmental organizations who are trying to help them; on Monday, they will travel to Tel Aviv to visit Israeli families who have suffered losses from bomb attacks.
“The delegation first of all is to show solidarity with the victims… which means the innocent [Palestinian] civilians who have been killed but also the innocent civilians who have been killed in Israel by the suicide bombings,” Amnesty senior press officer Kamal Samari told IslamOnline by telephone from Jerusalem on Saturday.
“A Palestinian mother grieving her child, she is the same as an Israeli mother grieving her child,” he said.
“We have declared in Amnesty International today – the 27 – and the 28 are international days of mourning for solidarity with… all victims,” he added.
On Saturday night, about 50 people gathered in Washington’s Dupont Circle to hold a candlelight vigil, mirroring at least 20 such vigils across the country and other actions in 20 different countries around the world, according to organizer Jonathan Pearson.
“The message is that this is a highly emotional issue,” Pearson, who is deputy director of Amnesty USA’s mid-Atlantic region, told IslamOnline. “What is getting lost in the emotional debate is the human suffering on both sides.”
Attendees arrived at the vigil and stood in a circle with lit candles on paper plates that had the motto: “No More Violence, No More Victims,” written on them. One by one, some stepped to the center to read the names of civilians – Palestinians or Israelis – who had been killed, as well as the circumstances of their deaths.
One, for example, read the story of a Palestinian family who was shot at by Israeli soldiers while trying to get to a hospital because the wife was in labor; her husband was killed, but the wife made it to the hospital and gave birth. Another read the story of members of an Israeli family who were killed in the pizzeria bombing in Jerusalem on August 9, 2001.
Sharon Burke, Amnesty USA’s advocacy director for the Middle East, urged listeners to also remember those who were still living and trying to survive despite the crisis of occupation.
“If people on both sides are going to continue to live and to try to have normal lives… light a candle for them, too,” she said.
Burke told IslamOnline that with the vigils and with the delegation’s continued pressure, “I’m optimistic that we can push the U.S. government to play a more constructive role.”
She stressed that while people tend to have very strong feelings on either side of this issue – “that’s not wrong” – it was important to keep sight of the fact of human suffering. Amnesty hoped the delegation would “put a human face on things,” she said.
One of the participants, Taegin Stevenson, who was spending the summer interning in Amnesty’s Washington office, said that the vigil “lets people in the community there are people working for peace [who] aren’t just one-sided.”
Her roommate, Jessica McGillvary, also attended the vigil “to show my support for what’s going on here.”
McGillvary expressed her concern that for many in the U.S., the violence in the Middle East is “just becoming normal… it’s important to keep it in people’s minds that this is something bad that’s going on that needs to stop.”
Pearson echoed the same concern, saying that the “international days of mourning” sent a message that “this killing is unacceptable, the various human rights abuses… are unacceptable and this has to stop.”
“If people do come together and really speak out, then this is not hopeless,” he added.
Meanwhile, in Jerusalem, the delegation prepared for meetings with victims as well as NGO’s, which Samari said were having a particularly difficult time helping civilians who have been affected by the violence.
He said that the delegation would also meet with members of the Israeli Knesset, but not with any government officials.
“Unfortunately we are unable to meet members of the Israeli government because they said that it is not the right time,” he told IslamOnline.
Samari said that Amnesty intended to press for the same demands it has been issuing for months: “We have asked for a long time to let human rights experts be deployed to save the lives of Palestinians and Israelis from the cycle of violence.”
“We think that the international community must be now very serious in addressing this unprecedented scale of human rights disaster, what we are seeing here,” he said.
“This situation of fear cannot continue,” he added, referring to the somber streets of Jerusalem, where he said, “we have never witnessed such despair and fear and frustration in both societies.”
“On the other hand, you have despair and frustration in the Palestinian society. This is only a recipe for more human rights crisis,” he said.
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