Since 7 October last year, 191 journalists and media workers have been killed as Israel is targeting and killing Palestinian journalists to suppress media coverage of the massacre in Gaza. To protest against this targeted killing of Palestinian journalists, an exhibition titled “Gaza Holocaust: Killing the Truthtellers” was organised by Drik Picture Library this afternoon at Dhanmondi’s Rabindra Sarobar.
Along with Drik family members and friends, visitors present at the venue stood in solidarity with photographs of journalists who died fighting for the liberation of Palestine.
Earlier on 5 May this year, to mark World Press Freedom Day 2024, Drik organised a 7-day exhibition under the same title and a panel discussion at DrikPath Bhaban in Panthapath.
In the introduction to the exhibition, which aimed to pay tribute to the media persons killed in Gaza, eminent photographer and Drik’s Managing Director Shahidul Alam said, “With access to international media denied by Israel, the Palestinian journalists were the sole witnesses to the destruction of hospitals, where healing hands once laboured to save desperate lives and abandoned children lay in deserted incubators, to mass graves with people buried alive.”
“They saw hungry people queuing outside food trucks gunned down and pregnant mothers, breasts dry and hearts heavy, buried under rubble. They saw too much, said too much and were plucked off, like carnival ducks in a shooting arcade, one by one. Sometimes alone, sometimes with families. Drones guided by technology giants honing in on the death trail of their mobile phones,” he said.
Shahidul Alam further said, “These brave journalists, in their sacrifice, have ignited the flame of conscience. They were more than flesh and bone. Martyrs to the sacred art of truth telling, their lens a mirror reflecting humanity’s darkest corners. The weight of their stories presses upon our collective conscience.”
This solidarity exhibition is part of resistance to Israeli aggression and commitment to liberating Palestine with the call for an immediate ceasefire and an end to the ongoing genocide.
