Human Rights Watch (HRW) on Tuesday released a report alleging detainment and torture of journalists within areas controlled by the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Hamas, which encompass the West Bank and Gaza Strip, bordering Israel.

The PA and rivaling Hamas have disputed control of the Palestinian territories for over 20 years. While the PA is given de jure control based on the 1994 Oslo Accords, Hamas, which controls Parliament and governs the Gaza Strip, practices de facto reign on the Palestinian people.

The report utilizes individual journalists’ testimonials of repression to highlight the alleged human rights violations being carried out each day against journalists in Gaza and the West Bank by both the PA and Hamas. “Palestinian forces in both the West Bank and Gaza regularly use threats of violence, taunts, solitary confinement, and beatings, including lashing and whipping of the feet of detainees, to elicit confessions, punish, and intimidate activists,” the report says. “Torture is governmental policy for both the PA and Hamas.”

The report further alleges that under both PA and Hamas censorship, social media use is curtailed and one can be arrested for speaking against the ruling regime. In one instance, an imprisoned dissenter was told “it’s forbidden to write against Hamas, we will shoot you,” and was charged with “misuse of technology.”

NGO Freedom House reported in 2017 that “Palestinian officials in both Gaza and the West Bank used summons and interrogations extensively during the year to harass and intimidate journalists.”

The HRW report corroborates these claims. In one interrogation, the report states, the Palestinian authorities “put [the prisoner] in “the Closet,” a room he described as roughly 60 centimeters by 60 centimeters in size where he said he had difficulty breathing … in subsequent interrogations, officers threatened to return him [there] if he did not speak.”

Hamas does not deny these allegations, but it asserts in official statements that Israel is the nation engaging in mass suppression of journalists.

Palestine has long been accused of lacking press freedoms. Reporters Without Borders, an international investigative body for crimes against journalists, ranks Palestine 134/180 nations, while Israel is ranked 87. “Interrogations and detention without any charge are part of the price that journalists pay for the political rivalry between Fatah and Hamas in the Palestinian territories,” reads its report.

To accompany the report, HRW released an interview with Omar Shakir, HRW’s Israel and Palestine director and contributor to the report, which revealed alleged atrocities committed by the Palestinian Authority in the areas they govern. “Palestinian authorities in the West Bank and Gaza Strip are systematically arresting scores of critics for their nonviolent expression,” said Shakir, “and then mistreating and torturing them in custody.”

Shakir further accuses Palestine’s de facto leaders, the political group Hamas, of conspiring to torture dissenters, based on interviews with almost 200 former detainees who were imprisoned for political dissent, along with “photo and video evidence as well as medical and court documents.”

Despite the grave prognosis, HRW encourages optimism. National reconciliation and freedom will require reckoning with these serious abuses, holding perpetrators to account, and dismantling their machineries of repression,” says the report.