The secretary general of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) executive committee, Saeb Erekat, called on the airline LATAM to apologize publicly to Palestinian citizen Dana Farrag and the Palestinian people for the discriminatory treatment they suffered when purchasing a ticket between the Colombian cities of Bucaramanga and Bogota.
Erakat said in a letter to LATAM, a Latin American holding company based in Las Condes, Santiago and Chile, that "the letter written by your company to Ms. Farraj stating that the company does not recognize the State of Palestine is a letter The State of Palestine is recognized not only by 139 countries around the world, including all South American countries, but also Latin America, your main base of operations, home to about 1 million citizens of Palestinian origin. "
Erakat expressed his shock that "LATAM" is now only updating its system to put Palestine on the list of countries, adding: "We have contacted Ms. Farraj and provided us with more details about this discriminatory and humiliating incident ... It was hard to believe that the LATAM system, It now has only been "updating" its system to turn Palestine into a state of Palestine, and your company has had at least seven years to finalize this "update" since the United Nations recognized the State of Palestine on November 29, 2012 through General Assembly resolution 67/19 " .
"We do not see this as a" regrettable confusion, "as you told Ms. Farraj, but we consider it a regrettable denial of the existence of Palestine, and we understand that you are taking some steps to deal with this outrageous situation, but there was no This statement is not related to your search for "ways to improve" your services, as your company stated, but to the moral damage that you caused to a citizen of the State of Palestine and to the people of Palestine as a whole. We ask you to make a public apology to Ms. Farraj and to the Palestinian people We note that this apology, in any case, would not affect the steps that may be decided upon and taken by Ms. Faraj to settle this issue. "
In the same context, Erekat expressed his deep concern about the promotion of the path recently launched by LATAM between Santiago / São Paulo and Tel Aviv and the photographs of the route. "We would like to draw your attention to the issue of promotion of the recently opened track, We are deeply concerned that the promotion of this new route includes photographs of the occupied Palestinian territory that have nothing to do with the State of Israel, including the Old City of Jerusalem, and recall that, in accordance with UN Security Council Resolution 478, all actions taken by Israel to annex Al- And nullified. "
Erekat stressed that Israel, the occupying power, uses tourism as a tool to normalize and colonize its illegal occupation and called on the company not to take any steps that may contribute to Israel´s goal of perpetuating its occupation and systematic denial of the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people. Is responsible for not engaging in acts of discrimination in violation of international law, and the United Nations Guidelines on Corporate and Human Rights clearly state the principles of "protection, respect and reparation".
