..."As we're watching a genocide unfold in Palestine with what looks like full complicity of the United States, we're also witnessing a parallel assault on those rising up to protest this genocide domestically," Diala Shamas, a senior staff attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights, said during Monday remarks before the Human Rights Committee.
"The public dehumanization of Palestinians at the highest level of US government has led to skyrocketing repression of activism and all expressions of support for Palestine," she added.
"When you dehumanize people over there, it has consequences domestically, and we have seen that unfold very quickly at a terrifying speed in the US," Shamas said in a Monday afternoon press conference in Geneva.
"We call for the United States to end its complicity in genocide and call for an immediate ceasefire. We also, of course, need to address the dehumanization and ask the United States what it is going to do to clearly roll back the process that we see unfolding: the dehumanization of Palestinian life, the repression of Palestinian protesters, the equation of Palestinians with terrorists at every turn, and the complete disregard for our deaths," Shamas said.
To that end, the Center for Constitutional Rights and supporting organizations are urging the Human Rights Committee to affirm the need for accountability for Israeli and US abuse of Palestinians.
Shamas hopes the committee will ask the US delegation to lay out the steps the government will take to ensure Palestinians and their allies have the ability to exercise their freedoms of speech and assembly – without fear of surveillance or retaliation.
"People have lost their jobs, been subjected to online harassment, contracts canceled, all for expressing their opinions or associating with those calling out atrocities committed by Israel," she said.
"The Human Rights Committee must act." ...
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