MARITIME LAWS

69. Under Art. 3 of the Rome Convention for the Suppression of Unlawful Acts against the Safety of Maritime Navigation of 1988, it is an international crime for any person or group of persons to seize or exercise control over a ship by force, and also a crime to injure or kill any person in the process. One cannot attack a ship and then claim self-defence if the people on board are resisting the armed hijackers. According to international law, the actions of the Israeli military were beyond the law and should be treated exactly the same as the Somali pirates hijacking ships off the African coast. Under maritime law anyone is legally entitled to resist unlawful capture, abduction and detention by any means at his/hers disposal.
Reference: Law of the Seas, Part VII
Artcle 87(a) provides for "Freedom of Navigation"
Article 88 states: 'The high seas shall be reserved for peaceful purposes'
Article 89 states: "No State may validly purport to subject any part of the high seas to its sovereignty"

GAZA FREEDOM FLOTILLA

68. Thank you for the Paul Mcgeough article giving us a non-Israeli version of events, a version that Israel does not want the world to hear, having confiscated all computers, cameras and cellphones. The American "Anne Jones" that McGeough mentions (Press 07 June) is probably Ann Wright, a former diplomat and Army Colonel, who resigned from the military in 2003 as a protest against the Iraq Iraq War. She has been very active in promoting the safety of women in the military from sexual abuse, rape to put it bluntly, by males in the military. There have been many such cases in Iraq. We have never met but I have had the privilege of talking to her over the telephone about shared concerns over the increased militarization of Guam. Ann Wright is a very brave principled American women. I'm not surprised that she took part in the Gaza Freedom Flotilla.
Contributed by L.G.

*Letter rejected by the editor because: "the letter is not being debated in the letter pages".

*L.G. "Not being debated ?? The most urgent issue in the world to-day."

*My commment: "The Press doesn't want us to know either". We have had this sort of answers several times before when writing on the Israel/Palestinian issues.

Full Text of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's Speech! (English, Turkish, Italian) | Palestine Think Tank

67.Full Text of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's Speech! (English, Turkish, Italian) Palestine Think Tank

PAPESTINIAN MINORS MOLESTED

66. Israeli "soldiers" (thugs is a better word) have been putting children behind bars. This fact is well documented by several human rights organisations. They are often sexually abused, including rape. Israelis are arresting appr. 700 minors every year. They are not allowed any access to lawyers or family. The practice is to break children's spirit. The Palestinian Chapter of Defence for Children (DCI) has collected 100 sworn affidavits this year of Palestinian children, under the age of 18, who said they were mistreated by their Israeli interrogators. Fourteen of them say they were sexually abused or threatened with sexual assault, including rape, if they confess what their interrogators accused them of. It is the powerful impact of sexual abuse has on these children that DCI has sounded the alarm at the highest possible international levels. The organisation has communicated affidavits to the Special UN Rapporteurs on Torture, hoping to galvanise enough international pressure to bring these abuses to an end.