Kawther Salam

Who is Kawther Salam?

Kawther Salam is a Palestinian journalist from Hebron. She has worked for Al-Ittihad, al-Hayat al-Jadida, and Al-Quds Al-Arabi. The Israeli organization, Gush Shalom, published a weekly diary of her experiences in Hebron on its website. She also collaborated on three films for Israeli television stations. Salam reported on human rights abuses by the Israeli military, naming particular soldiers, and filing legal complaints against them; she also lists Jewish settler activists alongside soldiers on her website as "terrorists."

She claims has been attacked by Israeli soldiers on several occasions and filed a lawsuit after one incident where her arm was broken. Two incidents of abuse towards Salam were documented in the 2001 Human Rights Watch report, Center of the Storm: a Case Study of Human Rights Abuses in Hebron District. Following death threats from Israeli military personnel, settlers, and "extreme Muslim findamentalists," she applied for and was granted political asylum in Vienna, Austria on December 5, 2002. The International Press Institute and the International Federation of Journalists both intervened on her behalf in her asylum application.