Call for pressure on blockading nations to stop rights violations

National Human Rights Committee (NHRC) Chairman HE Dr Ali bin Smaikh al-Marri heavily criticised yesterday the insistence of the blockading countries to violate human rights, deepening the struggle of peoples by completely ignoring international human rights law.He called on the international community, human rights organisations, and international parliaments to exert more pressure and prevent these countries from pursuing with their violations. Al-Marri was speaking in a seminar organised in New York by the NHRC on the challenges and opportunities facing human rights field as a result of the Qatar blockade. Dr Ioannis Konstantinidis, assistant professor at Qatar University, participated in the talk along with UN deputy director at Human Rights Watch Akshaya Kumar. The talk was moderated by Peter Coharis, an American legal expert. A number of representatives of UN international missions, human rights activists, and representatives of international legal organisations attended the seminar. Al-Marri called on the international community to hold those responsible for the blockade accountable for their human rights violations, and for their statements that challenges the call of the international community, humanitarian organisations, and the decisions of international legal bodies such as the International Court of Justice. He stressed that they were not concerned with cutting diplomatic ties for years, but rather they were concerned with ending the struggles of the GCC peoples. During the seminar, the NHRC chairman gave an overview of the latest ramifications and effects of the blockade. He highlighted the violations documented by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and international human rights organisations, in light of the insistence of the blockading countries to ignore the calls of the international community to stop their violations. He also highlighted the emergence of other types of violations against Qatari citizens in the blockading countries, such as enforced disappearance, arbitrary detention, piracy and espionage.Al-Marri strongly condemned the Egyptian authorities’ harassment of Qatari citizens and officials of official Qatari delegations, pointing out that the committee received documented complaints from citizens who were denied entry visas to Egyptian territories. The decision to ban members of official Qatari delegations in the Arab League was also a violation of Arab League agreements. He stressed that the National Committee will move urgently using international mechanisms to stop such violations and obstacles. He added that the Egyptian authorities’ did not just affect Qatari citizens, revealing that the National Committee for Human Rights has recently received numerous complaints from Egyptian residents in Qatar about the harassment they receive at Cairo airport, for no reasons other than being residents of Qatar. Al-Marri meanwhile expressed appreciation of Qatar’s initiative to host an international conference on fighting piracy and espionage. He pointed out that the National Human Rights Committee was the victim of 735,000 attempts to hack its website. He also called for the establishment of a UN Special Rapporteur on the crimes of electronic piracy and its impact on the enjoyment of human rights, and also called for placing these crimes on the agenda of the Human Rights Council.For his part, Konstantinidis said that the blockade imposed on Qatar is a violation of regional laws, noting that the countries of the blockade were communicating clearly that they have no desire to negotiate with Qatar. “All attempts to resolve the crisis failed, because of the position of the blockading countries.” Kumar meanwhile said that the violations committed by the blockading countries against Qatar are an attack against the freedom and fundamental rights of people, especially when families are separated and children are denied access to their parents or mothers. She pointed out that the reports of human rights organisations and those prepared by the United Nations indicate that the expulsion of Qatari nationals from the countries of the blockade caused the displacement of labour that were working for the citizens of Qatar in those countries, becoming homeless in some instances.