AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL urges Ki-moon to refer Goldstone report to security council October 4, 2009
The Palestinian Information Center - 3 October 2009
LONDON, (PA)– Amnesty International (AI) called Saturday on Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general, to refer the report of justice Richard Goldstone on Israeli war crimes in the Gaza Strip to the UN Security Council without delay.
The AI expressed its dismay at the human rights council for failing to take immediate steps to implement the report recommendations.
It expressed concern that a decision to delay voting on Goldstone’s report until March next year indicated a lack of political will to deal robustly with issues of accountability for violations of international humanitarian law and human rights in Gaza.
40 European organizations strongly denounced the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Mahmoud Abbas for suspending the discussion of Goldstone’s report despite it secured a majority vote at the UN human rights council.
In a joint statement issued Saturday, the organizations said that the PA’s position set a dangerous precedent and a disavowal of Gaza victims’ blood, and dealt a blow to the efforts made by the UN probe committee and many human rights organizations to expose Israel’s crimes against humanity.
They warned that the PA’s position would prompt Israel to escalate its aggression on the Palestinian aggression.
“The opportunity to pass the report in the UN human rights council was available and very large, and if adopted, it would have been a rare chance to condemn the occupation, impose sanctions on it, prosecute its leaders who perpetrated massacres and bring them to international trial, so regardless of the justifications it provided, it was surprising that the PA took such step,” the organizations underscored.
For his part, Yacoub Al-Ghandour, a member of the central committee for documenting and prosecuting war criminals (Tawtheeq), condemned Mahmoud Abbas for backtracking on the adoption of Goldstone’s report and asking for its deferral.
Ghandour demanded Abbas to back off from this serious decision which justify Israel’s crimes against the Palestinian people.
He appealed to the UN human rights council to shoulder its professional, ethical and humanitarian responsibilities and work on exposing Israel’s crimes against Gaza people.
In a news conference held Saturday in Gaza, the families of war victims deplored the PA for withdrawing its support for Goldstone’s report as high treason against the Palestinian martyrs, the wounded and thousands of homeless families.
The spokesman for the families expressed rejection of all deceptive justifications provided by the PA, and stressed that no one is entitled to waive their rights.
The spokesman on behalf of the families and victims who attended the conference appealed to free people of the world and all human rights organizations to immediately intervene to stop the unjust decision taken by the PA and work on the prosecution of Israel’s war criminals at international courts.
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