Palestinian journalist shot dead in Ramallah

Reporters Without Borders today condemned the killing of a Palestinian radio journalist, apparently by an Israeli army sniper, and said it appeared to be a "serious violation" of international rules about protection of civilians in wartime. Voice of Palestine journalist and presenter Issam Hamza Tillawi was shot in the back of the head as he was reporting on a Palestinian demonstration in Ramallah during the night of 21-22 September. "Israeli army troops benefit from a feeling of almost total immunity," said Reporters Without Borders secretary-general Robert Ménard, in a letter to Israeli defence minister Benyamin Ben Eliezer deploring the death of Tillawi, the third journalist in less than seven months to be killed in the Palestinian Occupied Territories. "Meanwhile, Palestinian journalists risk their lives every day by doing their job with very little proper equipment, notably without the bulletproof vests the foreign media have. We remind the Israeli army that, like all the world's armies, it is bound by the Geneva Conventions to protect civilians, which include journalists." Reporters Without Borders called on the Israeli government to immediately investigate the shooting and find out who was responsible for what appeared to be a "serious violation" of the Geneva Conventions. The organisation asked that the results be made public and the culprits punished. The Israeli army has made no comment on the incident, despite requests from Reporters Without Borders over the past four days. Tillawi, equipped with a tape-recorder, notebook and bag, left his home in Beitunia, near Ramallah, near midnight on 21 September to cover protests by thousands of Palestinians that were starting in the streets of West Bank and Gaza Strip towns against the Israeli army's siege of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's headquarters in Ramallah. The chief editor of the Voice of Palestine, who was with him, said Tillawi was wearing a jacket marked "press." When he got to the demonstrations in the centre of Ramallah, Tillawi mingled with the crowd to record the views of the protesters. Israeli troops then reportedly fired teargas grenades and as Tillawi was running from the scene he was hit by a shot that witnesses said came from an Israeli sniper on top of a building. The head of Ramallah hospital told Reporters Without Borders that Tillawi had been hit by a bullet that smashed open the back of his head, making an operation impossible. He died at the hospital at around 1 a.m., half an hour after he had been wounded. Tillawi, 32 and married with no children, had worked since 1997 for Voice of Palestine, where several times a week he presented a news programme called "Nahar Jadid" (New Day), as well as one on Sunday called "International Affairs." Since September 2000, Reporters Without Borders has counted 46 cases of journalists who have been wounded by gunfire, nearly all from Israeli sources according to its on-the-spot investigations. Several, mostly Palestinians, were seriously wounded, even though some were clearly identifiable as journalists and standing apart from clashes when hit. With very few exceptions, no serious enquiry into the incidents has been made or punishment meted out to those responsible, even when this responsibility was clear, as in the case of the French TF1 TV reporter Bertrand Aguirre, wounded on 15 May last year in Ramallah. On 13 March this year, Raffaele Ciriello, special correspondent in Ramallah of the Italian daily Corriere della Sera, was killed by Israeli gunfire from a tank in the city's Al Manara square. On 23 August, the Israeli army denied all responsibility, saying that there was no proof of any firing at the journalist. On 12 July, in Jenin, Palestinian photographer Imad Abu Zarha was killed by Israeli gunfire. Reporters Without Borders calls on the Israeli authorities once again to make thorough investigations of all the cases of journalists killed or wounded since September 2000.