OCCUPIED
JERUSALEM, April 8 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - The Arab
Committee for Human Rights flatly condemned Tuesday, April 8, the U.S.
targeting of the offices of Al-Jazeera and Abu Dhabi TV channels in
Baghdad, which claimed the life of Al-Jazeera correspondent Tareq
Ayyoub.
The
committee also announced the setting-up of an international coalition to
put U.S. and U.K. war criminals on trial.
“It
(the coalition) will assume the responsibility of filing lawsuits before
international criminal tribunals to punish the forces of aggression for
their (war) crimes),” the committee said in a statement, a copy of
which obtained by Al-Quds Press news agency.
The
statement, entitled “A War Without Eyewitnesses…Crimes Without
Punishment,” further called on “all democratic powers worldwide and
world peace camp to act in concert to bring to immediate cessation such
a barbaric aggression on the Iraqi people.”
“Amidst
the apocalyptic scene of destruction and havoc in Iraq, the killing of
the hundreds of children, women and elders, the U.S. warplanes bombard
this morning the offices of Al-Jazeera and Abu Dhabi channels.
“The
attack left the offices in rubbles, wounded journalists and killed
Al-Jazeera correspondent Tareq Ayyoub,” the statement read.
The
U.S. A-10 strike warplane “fired two missiles on them (Al-Jazeera and
Abu Dhabi offices), leaving no room for doubts that the Arab media as a
whole is the first and foremost target just as it happened during the
U.S. war on Afghanistan, when the U.S. aircraft destroyed Al-Jazeera
office in Kabul,” it added.
The
committee offered its heartfelt condolences for and voiced its
solidarity with the family of martyr Ayyoub and for the Al-Jazeera staff
members in such hard times.
“They
bravely covered the painful events with objectivity and seriousness and
set themselves as a paradigm for professionalism at the time British and
the U.S. media plunged into illusions, misleading information,
deliberate lies and exaggerations,” the statement charged.
False
Values Unmasked
“Although
the U.S. administration boasts enhancing democracy and human rights, the
scenes in (the Cuba-based) Guantanamo or Baghdad are a telling example
of the U.S. practices and its real understanding of the concepts it
brags about such as the clichés of fair trial or freedom of
expression” the statement charged.
The
committee said that after such striking examples “we can fairly expect
the rottenness of individual and collective freedoms and free
elections.”
“Such
clichés, in effect, would only serve as a fig to paper over the
comeback of colonialism,” it stressed.
The
committee urged all human rights watchdogs, particularly those defending
freedom of journalism, to voice a wake-up cry to condemn and hunt down
all war criminals and put an end to the law of the jungle doctrine.
