UN rights expert says complicity with Israel in Gaza ‘genocide’ is ‘shame of our time’
Sign up now: Get ST's newsletters delivered to your inbox
Ms Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories, has faced harsh criticism over her relentless criticism and longstanding accusations that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.
PHOTO: REUTERS
Follow topic:
GENEVA – A UN rights expert reiterated on Sept 15 that Israel was committing “genocide” in Gaza, slamming what she said was the “complicity” of other countries as “the shame of our time”.
“Far too many states continue to look away, normalise the suffering, and even profit from it,” Ms Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories, told reporters in Geneva.
“Arms trade and diplomatic engagement with Israel continue unabated,” she added.
“This is not just morally wrong, this is unlawful,” she insisted, demanding “accountability (for) the very people who have been giving orders to continue trade and arms transfers towards Israel”.
UN special rapporteurs are independent experts mandated by the UN Human Rights Council but do not speak on behalf of the UN.
The Italian expert has faced harsh criticism from Israel and some of its allies over her relentless criticism and longstanding accusations that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.
The war erupted nearly two years ago after Hamas militants attacked Israel on Oct 7, 2023, resulting in the deaths of 1,219 people, most of them civilians. Israel’s retaliatory campaign in Gaza has killed nearly 65,000 people, mostly civilians as well.
But Ms Albanese on Sept 15 suggested that the true number could be 10 times higher.
In an unprecedented move, Washington slapped sanctions on Ms Albanese in July, calling her work “biased and malicious”.
Ms Albanese reiterated that the US sanctions against her, alongside its sanctions against International Criminal Court judges, were “unacceptable”.
She highlighted that the US had for decades backed the Israeli government “militarily, politically, diplomatically, strategically, discursively”.
But under the current administration of President Donald Trump, she cautioned that support had “passed the Rubicon”.
Ms Albanese also warned that history would not look kindly on the US or other countries that continue to provide support for Israel amid growing accusations of genocide.
“Not that this is the first genocide that has been known,” she said, pointing to the Holocaust, the Bosnian genocide and the Rwanda genocide as events that “were also known to the people of the time”.
Ms Albanese added that “this genocide has something different, is openly incited, cynically denied and relentlessly supported, armed and weaponised, while those who oppose it are silenced, beaten, criminalised and smeared”.
“This is the shame of our time.”
The rapporteur said she had “asked prime ministers, presidents, foreign ministers, so-called world leaders” the same question: “How do you sleep? When will you act?” AFP
