Tuesday, November 30, 1999

RAMALLAH -- The Palestinian Authority on Monday continued its arrest campaign against those who signed a leaflet accusing PA Chairman Yasser Arafat of tolerating corruption in his administration.

Eight of the 20 prominent signatories are members of the Palestinian Legislative Council and Arafat has demanded a meeting of the PLC to remove their parliamentary immunity. The PLC, dominated by Arafat's Fatah PLO faction, is not expected to object.

By Monday, six of the signatories -- all from Nablus -- were already taken into custody. Two others, including former Nablus Mayor Bassam Shakha, have been confined to house arrest.

A PA minister said the PLC objects to lifting the immunity of those who signed the petition. But other sources said a PLC meeting would discuss the petition on Monday and that two of the legislators who signed the statement have already withdrawn their support.

The leaflet was the most dramatic challenge to Arafat's five-year rule of the West Bank and Gaza Strip by his own people. The statement said corruption in the PA is so widespread that it has harmed Palestinian society and such vital services as medical and social welfare.

"Alarm bells should ring in every village, town and refugee camp as well as in every corner, every shop, home and office. The homeland is being sold and the public is being let down and destroyed," the petition said. "Let us join hands to confront this tyranny and corruption."

The Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group said on Monday that it believes those detained are being pressured to renounce the petition. "They are being made to sign under duress," he said. "This is developing to be a case of severe pressure against the freedom of opinion and expression, and should prove a very embarrassing situation for Arafat."

The organization called on donor countries to press the PA to release the detainees.

Signatories of the petition, who said they would seek to collect tens of thousands of signatures, said for several years they tried quiet lobbying to ensure that the PA recognizes the authority of the judiciary and the legislature as balances to the executive authority. But the PA rejected any limits of its power.

"The truth is that this has been an attempt of the last two or three years," said former Agriculture Minister Abdul Jawad Salah, an organizer of the petition. "We have been trying to commit the PA to a legal and political route that would define the role of the three authorities. But the executive authority never responded to our attempts with any interest. As a result, we have formed the committee to tell the authority publicly we will not allow it to impose this corrupt way that was never dreamed of by the Palestinian people."

Salah pointed to an International Monetary Fund report that one-quarter of donor funds to the PA has disappeared without any accounting. "Nobody is able to say how this money was spent," he said.

PA Parliamentary Affairs Minister Nabil Amr dismissed the importance of the statement, saying that newspapers had often discussed corruption in the executive. But Amr justified the arrests of the signatories, saying they have no right to make accusations.

Amr said the leaflet cannot be called an act of freedom of expression. "Freedom of thought is not freedom for evil or accusations," Amr said. "It demands responsibility."

LAW, the Palestinian Society for the Protection of Human Rights and the Environment, protested the detentions said it "considers these arrests to be a grave human rights violation of the right to freedom of being, expression and thought. The illegal measures taken are not based on any warrants issued by court."

The leaflet said that six years after the 1993 Oslo accords more Palestinian land is being seized, settlements continue to expand, Palestinian jails are being filled with dissidents and the refugee issue is being liquidated.

"We can't have negotiations under such conditions," PLC member Hussan Khader, a signatory said. "If the Palestinian house is not strong nothing will be achieved."

PA officials responded that the petitioners used the corruption issue to gain support among Palestinians. They said their real goal is to stop the peace process.

"The content of the petition is a revolt against the peace process," PA minister Ziyad Abu Ziyad said on Monday. "They are endangering the entire peace process, which is our challenge and the reason we established the PA."