Anthony Bellanger, Secretary General of the IFJ, said that “when press freedom is trampled and war crimes are committed, France has a duty to act to protect its citizens.”
The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) and its French affiliate, the National Journalists’ Union (SNJ), announced on Tuesday that they filed a complaint over restrictions on press freedom and alleged war crimes in the Palestinian territories, the Anadolu news agency reported.
The organizations said in a statement that they filed the complaint with Paris’s National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor on November 26 against unknown parties, citing numerous testimonies from French journalists collected anonymously, the report stated.
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“The freedom to inform and to be informed, fundamental principles, must become a reality again in Gaza and the West Bank,” the organizations said, reiterating the need for action and the role of the French justice system.
“Faced with the massive obstruction of journalists’ work in the occupied Palestinian territories, symbolic declarations are valuable, but ineffective. Action is needed, and the French justice system has a role to play. This is the purpose of our complaint filed in Paris last week,” they said.
‘Unprecedented’ Blackout
They noted that the media lockdown of Gaza, an “unprecedented” blackout in the conflict, and the “ruthless repression” of Palestinian journalists, along with 225 killings verified by the IFJ, remain “at the heart of the complaint.”
The two organizations referred to French journalists’ descriptions of daily reality on the ground, marked by denial of access, threats, confiscation of equipment, occasional physical assaults, arbitrary detentions, and sometimes even manhunts.
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Underlining that the complaint does not target any specific individual, the watchdogs stressed that the obstacles documented are carried out by military and police units, customs and administrative services, and private individuals, including settlers in the occupied territories.
“The risk of being killed is real, sometimes tangible, when you find yourself pursued by thirty armed settlers. These violations of journalists’ fundamental rights cannot go unpunished,” said Vanessa Ripoche and Julien Fleury, general secretaries of the SNJ.
The statement also underscored that the reported acts take place in occupied territories, which “prevents Israel from invoking state immunity” and “allows French courts to take action,” as the violations target French nationals and affect their fundamental freedoms.
‘Press Freedom is Trampled’
Anthony Bellanger, Secretary General of the IFJ, stated: “We will no longer accept that French journalists are prevented from doing their work, threatened, intimidated, or targeted in territories where international humanitarian law is fully applied.”
He added: “When press freedom is trampled and war crimes are committed, France has a duty to act to protect its citizens. This complaint marks a necessary step: it serves as a reminder that no one is above international law and that the truth cannot be silenced.”
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Ines Davau and Louise El Yafi, lawyers for the IFJ and SNJ, said that “this is the first time that a legal action of this nature—based both on systematic obstruction of journalists’ work and on war crimes targeting media professionals—has been brought before a national court to protect French reporters in a conflict zone.”
On Tuesday, the Nasser Medical Complex confirmed that Palestinian photojournalist Mahmoud Wadi was killed in a drone strike near the yellow line in central Khan Yunis — a zone Israel claims under the terms of the agreement, effectively placing more than 53 percent of Gaza under occupation control.
Rising Death Toll
According to the UN, 260 media professionals have been killed in Israel’s two-year military assault on Gaza.
Addressing the 2025 United Nations International Media Seminar on Peace in the Middle East on Monday, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said that “journalists in Gaza have been facing the same risks and realities as the people they cover – including displacement, famine and death.”
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He said the total number of journalists killed made “this the deadliest conflict for journalists in decades.”
Guterres stressed that “The rules of war are clear: Civilians and civilian infrastructure are not a target.”
He said journalists must be able to “perform their essential work without interference, intimidation or harm. This includes the unacceptable ban that prevents international journalists from accessing Gaza.”
(Anadolu, PC)
