JERUSALEM (AP) – A human rights researcher who is being deported from Israel over his alleged boycott advocacy said Sunday he will remain in his position and continue doing the “important, urgent work” of documenting violations in Israel and the Palestinian territories from abroad.
Omar Shakir, the Israel and Palestine Director for Human Rights Watch since October 2016, must leave the country Monday after the Supreme Court upheld a deportation order earlier this month following a long legal battle.
“We’re talking about a half-century-long occupation defined by systematic repression and institutional discrimination,” Shakir told The Associated Press. “That requires important, urgent work, and it’s unfortunate that I won’t be able to do it on the ground, but we won’t stop doing it.”
Kenneth Roth, the executive director of Human Rights Watch, said Israel was joining a “fairly ugly group of governments,” including Iran, Egypt and Venezuela, that have barred its researchers.
“They all thought that if you can somehow silence the messenger, you can then silence Human Rights Watch. It didn’t work out. We find ways to cover these countries even if our researcher is not able to be on the ground, and we’ll do the same thing with Israel,” he said.