Statement by Melanie Nathan, Executive Director of African Human Rights Coalition, Jan 01, 2025.
It is the tsart of a new year, 2025. It has been 452 days since Oct 07, when African Human rights Coalition (AHRC) unconditionally condemned the attack by Palestinian Hamas. Today, again, AHRC is calling for the immediate unconditional release and return of all the hostages by Palestinians and Hamas.
At the start of this new year, 2025, it is over 450 days since Palestinian Hamas conducted a terrorist attack in Israel. On October 7, 2023, more than 1,200 men, women and children, including 46 Americans and citizens of more than 30 countries, were slaughtered by Hamas – the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. Girls and women were raped . The depravity of Hamas’s crimes, according to the U.S. State department, is almost unspeakable.
Hamas also took 254 people hostage that day, including 12 Americans. Four of those Americans – Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Itay Chen, Judy Weinstein, and Gad Haggai – were murdered by Hamas while in captivity.
There are also an estimated 100 hostages who remain held in Gaza today. They include men, women, young boys, young girls, two babies, and elderly people from more than 25 nations.
A senior United Nations official found “clear and convincing” information that hostages have been raped and sexually abused in Gaza and “reasonable grounds” to believe sexual violence, including rape and gang rape, occurred during the Oct. 7 terrorist attack led by Hamas.
“Based on the information it gathered, the mission team found clear and convincing information that sexual violence, including rape, sexualized torture, cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment has been committed against hostages," the U.N. said in a report, adding that it "has reasonable grounds to believe that such violence may be ongoing against those still held in captivity.”
It has been 452 days since Oct 07, when AHRC unconditionally condemned the OCT 07 attack by Palestinian Hamas. Today, again, AHRC is calling for the immediate unconditional release and return of all the stolen hostages by Palestinians and Hamas.
This act of kidnapping by terrorists, the continued captivity, assaults, rape and torture in horrific conditions, is an ongoing violent act of terrorism, and a breach of the human rights of those held against their will, without cause. This gross act of inhumanity stands alone and separately from any war, including the war in Gaza.
The world has stood by and continued to watch as these captives are used as pawns, as if chattels, to be traded and negotiated. They should not be traded in any deal. Their countries have every right to go to whatever means necessary to attempt their rescue, until their return. It has cost too many lives, especially in the face of the orchestrated tactical human sacrifice by Hamas perpetrated against the Palestinians.
In other words Hamas has placed too many people purposely in harms way to get the world to sympathize with its cause, and hence manipulated the world into thinking that the stolen people are justifiably hostages suited for the purpose of negotiation. There is no justifiable purpose. it is time to end the manipulation and complicit participation of world leaders.
It is time for the world to stop being complicit in this ongoing act of terrorism. It is for this reason and this reason alone that AHRC is calling on Human Rights organizations and all governments to demand Gazans, Palestinians and Hamas release the stolen people now, unconditionally.
The reason we are not calling for an end to the war in Gaza is because we see it as an ongoing reaction to the ongoing terror event we have described. We believe that once the stolen hostages are returned the war will in fact end and if it does. not there will be a justification to demand its conclusion.
African Human Rights Coalition (AHRC) provides advocacy and direct humanitarian services to LGBTQI+ people forcibly displaced by persecution and criminalizing laws. Over 70% services are provided to LGBTQI+ people of the Muslim faith. PICS: UNWRA EMPLOYEE STEALING WOUNDED/ DEAD JEWS FROM KIBBUTZ BE'ERI DURING MASSACRE BY PALESTINIANS.
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