KUALA LUMPUR, 11 Jan 2009: Malaysia plans to propose several measures at the upcoming Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) Information Ministers Meeting aimed at stopping the killing and maiming of Palestinians by the Israeli invasion of Gaza.
Information Minister Datuk Ahmad Shabery Cheek said he would attempt to get all the OIC member states to agree that what was happening in Palestine was nothing less than “ethnic cleansing” or genocide.
“What we have been seeing in the last two weeks is sheer slaughter. There are very few countries in the world that can face up to the military might and power of the Israeli military.
“What can the Palestinians do when they have been blockaded and deprived of basic necessities all this time?” he told Bernama here today.
Ahmad Shabery, who will lead the Malaysian delegation to the 8th meeting of the OIC Information Ministers in Rabat, Morocco, from 25 to 28 Jan, said he would also try to get the OIC members to regard Gaza and the West Bank as huge concentration camps created by the Tel Aviv regime for the Palestinian people who have been driven from their ancestral homes and lands.
Ahmad Shabery said the two huge concentration camps were similar to the infamous Auschwitz which the Nazis created to incarcerate and kill Jews during the Second World War.
The Vatican was reported by a foreign news agency on 8 Jan as calling Gaza and the West Bank as a huge concentration camp.
Cardinal Renato Martino, president of the Vatican’s Council for Justice and Peace, was quoted as saying that “defenceless populations are always the one who pay. Look at the conditions in Gaza. More and more, it resembles a big concentration camp”.
Ahmad Shabery said it was important for the OIC to accept these two facts as they would be the first step in initiating other measures to bring the perpetrators to the World Court to be tried for war crimes against humanity.
Equally important would be the move to help the Palestinians to show the atrocities and their sufferings through the Internet so that the world could understand and witness their plight, he said.
“We can help train and equip the Palestinians to set up their blogs and to get their images or pictures out of Gaza and the West Bank through the Internet, SMS and other new media so that the world can see and know of their plight and suffering,” Ahmad Shabery said.
The international media, he said, had been prevented from entering Gaza because the aggressors know that images of the devastation and killing of innocent women and children would turn world opinion against them.
Ahmad Shabery said the Palestinian people were at the losing end of public opinion because the international media had not told their stories in full, like why they were firing their home-made devices into Israel.
“They had been blockaded in their huge concentration camps where they are facing starvation and diseases. What do you expect people in that situation to do?” he said.
He said it was opportune that the OIC meeting was being held at the end of the month as he could forward the decisions of the special sitting of the Dewan Rakyat on Palestine tomorrow to the grouping’s member states.
The question of Palestine and Al-Quds (or Jerusalem) tops the agenda of the OIC Information Ministers Meeting, which would be preceded by the two-day senior officials meeting.
The Israeli invasion of Gaza, launched on 27 Dec has so far resulted in more than 800 Palestinians killed and thousands injured.
The Zionist regime has also failed to heed a United Nation’s resolution passed on 9 Jan calling for a cease-fire. — Bernama
