A year to the day after the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympic Games, the spectators who came to admire the basin in the Parisian sky on Saturday evening saw an unusual message displayed on the ball for ten minutes: “Stop genocide in Gaza”, followed by the Amnesty International logo. The NGO, behind this action, intended to “recall that what is happening in Gaza today does not in any way be part of the Olympic spirit,” she said in a statement.
“What is happening in Gaza is the exact opposite of the values of humanism and pacifism advocated by the Olympic Charter. The intensity of the violations committed by the Israeli army against the civilian populations, men, women, elderly, children, forces us in the context of this Olympic celebration to recall the need to immediately put an end to the current genocide in Gaza, “said Anne Savinel-Barras, president of Amnesty International France.
A call to France
The NGO, while denouncing the “odious crimes committed by Hamas and the other Palestinian groups” on October 7, 2023, stresses that “all the red lines of international humanitarian law were crossed in the current genocide” in the Palestinian territory. She calls on France to “go from words to action”, to “respect its obligations to prevent and punish the current genocide in the occupied Gaza Strip” and to “cooperate with the International Criminal Court”.
While a United Nations Conference must be held on Monday in Tuesday “to discuss a peaceful settlement of the Palestinian issue and the implementation of the two -state solution”, Amnesty International believes that “France must act within the framework of the conference so that the states gathered take in urgency concrete measures to end the genocide”.
Two people arrested then released
According to the NGO, the device used to project the message on the Olympic basin is “a light, clean, little energy -free device” which “will not leave any trace on the basin”.
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Two people were arrested, according to information from our colleagues from Parisian : A man on the balcony of the Regina hotel, rue de Rivoli, from which the message was projected, then a second, which had rented the room. Released after 1.5 hours after recognizing the facts, they should not be prosecuted, no characterized offense having been retained, written the daily.