The Comité pour le Respect des Libertés et des Droits de l'Homme en Tunisie (CRLDHT) strongly condemns the illegal interception of the humanitarian ship Handala by the Israeli army in international waters on the night of July 26-27, 2025.

The boat, chartered by the Freedom Flotilla coalition, was carrying an exclusively humanitarian cargo destined for the people of Gaza, who for months had been subjected to organized starvation, used as a weapon of war and a means of collective submission. On board were 21 civilians from several countries, engaged in a mission of relief, conscience and solidarity. Their collective arrest, the forced towing of the ship to Ashdod and the confiscation of humanitarian aid constitute a serious violation of international maritime law, the Geneva Conventions and the fundamental principles of humanitarian law. This act of state piracy, committed in the middle of the sea, embodies what we are now entitled to call: a rogue state, racist, criminal and genocidal, which persists in defying the law and humiliating humanity.

The CRLDHT

• Affirms its total solidarity with all the crew members of the Handala :
  • Hatem Aouini (Tunisia) - teacher, trade unionist
  • Christian Smalls (USA) - trade unionist, founder of the Amazon Labor Union
  • Huwaida Arraf (Palestine/United States) - lawyer and human rights activist
  • Emma Fourreau (France/Sweden) - Green MEP
  • Gabrielle Cathala (France) - MP and humanitarian
  • Frank Romano (France/United States) - lawyer and academic
  • Robert Martin (Australia) - human rights activist
  • Jacob Berger (United States) - artist and activist
  • Bob Suberi (United States) - veteran anti-Zionist
  • Antonio Mazzeo (Italy) - journalist and teacher
  • Santiago González Vallejo (Spain) - economist, human rights defender
  • Sergio Toribio (Spain) - engineer and environmental activist
  • Justine Kempf (France) - nurse, humanitarian volunteer
  • Ange Sahuquet (France) - engineer and activist
  • Antonio La Picirella (Italy) - sailor
  • Braedon Peluso (United States) - experienced sailor
  • Chloé Fiona Ludden (France/United Kingdom) - former UN official
  • Yipeng Ge (Canada) - volunteer doctor
  • Waad Al Musa (Palestine) - journalist
  • Mohammed Mustafa (Palestine) - doctor
  • Vigdis Bjorvand (Norway)
• Demands their immediate release, their physical and legal protection, and the return of humanitarian aid destined for Gaza's civilians.
• Recalls that the use of famine as a military strategy constitutes a war crime under the Rome Statute, and that international solidarity cannot and must not be criminalized.
• Calls on the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court to document this violation as an additional presumption of the material and moral elements constituting the crime of genocide, as defined by the Rome Statute.

The CRLDHT calls on

• The United Nations, in particular the Secretary-General, the Human Rights Council and the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), to immediately take up this case and demand the unconditional release of the detainees-hostages.
• The governments concerned (Tunisia, France, United States, Italy, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, Palestine) to fully assume their diplomatic and legal responsibilities, and not to give in to complicit silence or realpolitik.
• international civil society - trade unions, associations, NGOs - to unequivocally condemn this act of transnational repression and to reaffirm an essential truth: supporting Gaza is not a breach of the law; it is a fundamental right and a universal duty, enshrined in human conscience and international law.

It's not a ship that the Israeli army has boarded, it's a universal gesture of dignity, justice and fraternity that it wanted to silence.
Free the crew of the Handala. Let humanity pass.

Paris - Tunis, July 29, 2025
Committee for the Respect of Freedoms and Human Rights in Tunisia (CRLDHT)