More Balkan Activists Held as Israel Thwarts New Gaza Flotilla

Screenshot of CCTV footage from the Conscience Ship in waters near Israel. Photo: Instagram/gazafreedomflotilla Turkish and Kosovo Albanian activists were among those detained on Wednesday by the Israeli Navy following a raid on the Conscience ship, one of the vessels participating in the Gaza Freedom Flotilla that was transporting humanitarian aid to the embattled Palestinian territory. According to media reports, at least three Turkish lawmakers and several other Turkish nationals were on board the Conscience, alongside around 90 activists, journalists and doctors.  The Turkish Foreign Ministry reacted angrily to the interception, calling it an “act of piracy by the genocidal Netanyahu government”. “This attack against civilian activists, including Turkish citizens and lawmakers, is a severe violation of international law,” said a Foreign Ministry statement, Turkey’s Daily Sabah news website reported. Israel has said the flotilla’s detained passengers are expected to be deported quickly. On Wednesday, a protest was held in Istanbul against the interception of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla and last week’s interception of the Global Sumud Flotilla. Some 450 activists including Greek, Turkish, Serbian and Bulgarian citizens were detained when the Global Sumud Flotilla was intercepted by the Israeli Navy. The Freedom Flotilla Coalition and other flotilla organisers condemned what they called “the illegal seizure and unlawful detention” of vessels, activists and aid including medical supplies and respiratory equipment worth over $110,000 destined for Gaza’s devastated hospitals. “These repeated attacks on unarmed civilians demonstrate Israel’s deliberate escalation and the total failure of governments to enforce international law,” said the organisers in a statement. One of the activists on board the Conscience vessel was Kosovo Albanian anesthetist Albulena Fazliu, who said in a video posted on October 5 that the ship’s mission was “to express our solidarity with the Palestinian healthcare workers and journalists killed by the criminal state of Israel”. Prior to boarding the ship on September 4, Fazliu posted a video explaining that she was a refugee born in the 1990s in Kosovo who arrived in Germany as a child with her family to escape the Kosovo war. One of her first memories, she recalled, was “having to cross borders in the middle of the night with my family in order to escape persecution”.  She said this led her to make the decision to board the boat to Gaza because “no child in this world deserves to be killed deliberately”.  The Kosovo based activist group Feminist Collective called on Kosovo’s authorities to demand Fazliu’s release. There had been no reaction from the Kosovo authorities by the time of publication. In a statement, the Israeli Foreign Ministry said that the Gaza Freedom Flotilla was “another futile attempt to breach the legal naval blockade and enter a combat zone ended in nothing”.  After the raid on the Global Sumud Flotilla last week, detained activists, including internationally known environmental campaigner Greta Thunberg, claimed to have been physically mistreated by the Israeli authorities. The Israeli Foreign Ministry described the claims as “ludicrous and baseless allegations”.