Palestinian Prisoners Day 2017 – Call to solidarity

Palestine Updates 35/2017

Palestinian Prisoners Day 2017 – Call to solidarity

“On the occasion of Palestinian Prisoners’ Day and the start of tomorrow’s collective and open-ended hunger strike which is led by imprisoned Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) member Marwan Barghouthi and will be joined by more than 1,600 Palestinian prisoners representing various political factions, we honor and pay great tribute to our prisoners for their courage, continued steadfastness and commitment to independence and justice in the face of the belligerent military occupier.

The entire global community should be alarmed by Israel’s willful breach and devaluation of the rights and lives of Palestinian political prisoners, especially in regards to the imprisonment and ill-treatment of Palestinian men, women, children, and the elderly. Israel continues to employ repressive and illegal measures against the Palestinian prisoners; these include the extreme and unjust use of administrative detention and solitary confinement, the transfer of detainees from occupied Palestine to Israel, the deliberate medical neglect and lack of health care, the constant prevention of visitations by family members, and the denial of adequate education for prisoners. Israel must not be given a free hand to systematically dehumanize the Palestinian people without any serious accountability or punitive measures.
(PLO Executive Committee Member Dr. Hanan Ashrawi)

 

Take Action: Palestinian Prisoners’ Month 2017
Addameer Prisoner Support & Human Rights Association calls on campaigners, activists, and people of conscience to take actions for Palestinian Prisoners’ Day on April 17 to stand in solidarity with all Palestinian political prisoners. Every year, the month of April is considered Palestinian prisoners’ month. In this month, the Palestinian people and supporters of justice and liberation for Palestine all over the world mark this month by expressing their support to Palestinian political prisoners through organizing events and activities to stand in solidarity with Palestinian prisoners of freedom.

This month is one of demonstrations, rallies, marches, events and actions to commemorate support and build solidarity for the struggle of imprisoned Palestinians. 2017 marks the year of 50 years of military courts and military orders, controlling all aspects of Palestinian civil and political life. We urge all activists, campaigners, organizations and people of conscience to organize actions for Palestinian prisoners’ freedom throughout the month of April 2017.

Approximately 6,500 Palestinians are currently held in Israeli prisons and detention centers, including approximately 300 children and nearly 550 held under administrative detention, a form of detention without charge or trial that Israel uses to hold Palestinians indefinitely on secret information.

Each year the Israeli military arrests thousands of Palestinians in an attempt to suppress any resistance to its continued occupation and apartheid policies. Among these are hundreds of children, some as young as 12 years old. In too many cases Palestinian children are tortured, ill-treated, placed in solitary confinement and coerced into signing a confession in Hebrew, a language which most Palestinian children do not understand. Every year approximately 500-700 children are sentenced in Israeli courts.

Night raids are the most common form of arrest, during which Israeli soldiers will ransack an individual’s house, destroying personal property and abusing physically abusing family members. The arrested person will then be handcuffed and blindfolded before being thrown into the back of an Israeli military jeep, face-down, where the beatings, insults, and humiliation will continue.

Under Israeli military law, Palestinians can be interrogated for a period of 75 days and denied access to a lawyer for 60 days. Since 1967, approximately 75 Palestinian detainees have died as a result of torture while under Israeli interrogation.

Every day, Palestinian prisoners are on the front lines of struggle, facing torturous interrogation, nighttime raids, solitary confinement and relentless attacks on their rights at the hands of Israeli occupation forces. Those attacks are aided by international and corporate complicity, support and profiteering. Palestinian Prisoners’ Day is a critical time to stand against state and corporate complicity with Israeli imprisonment of Palestinian political prisoners.
Read more on the Addameer website.

Take Action: Palestinian Prisoners’ Month 2017
Addameer Prisoner Support & Human Rights Association calls on campaigners, activists, and people of conscience to take actions for Palestinian Prisoners’ Day on April 17 to stand in solidarity with all Palestinian political prisoners. Every year, the month of April is considered Palestinian prisoners’ month. In this month, the Palestinian people and supporters of justice and liberation for Palestine all over the world mark this month by expressing their support to Palestinian political prisoners through organizing events and activities to stand in solidarity with Palestinian prisoners of freedom.

This month is one of demonstrations, rallies, marches, events and actions to support and build solidarity for the struggle of imprisoned Palestinians. 2017 marks the year of 50 years of military courts and military orders, controlling all aspects of Palestinian civil and political life. We urge all activists, campaigners, organizations and people of conscience to organize actions for Palestinian prisoners’ freedom throughout the month of April 2017. Addameer Prisoner Support & Human Rights Association calls on campaigners, activists, and people of conscience to take actions for Palestinian Prisoners’ Day on April 17 to stand in solidarity with all Palestinian political prisoners. Every year, the month of April is considered Palestinian prisoners’ month. In this month, the Palestinian people and supporters of justice and liberation for Palestine all over the world mark this month by expressing their support to Palestinian political prisoners through organizing events and activities to stand in solidarity with Palestinian prisoners of freedom.  This month is one of demonstrations, rallies, marches, events and actions to com

Approximately 6,500 Palestinians are currently held in Israeli prisons and detention centers, including approximately 300 children and nearly 550 held under administrative detention, a form of detention without charge or trial that Israel uses to hold Palestinians indefinitely on secret information.

Each year the Israeli military arrests thousands of Palestinians in an attempt to suppress any resistance to its continued occupation and apartheid policies. Among these are hundreds of children, some as young as 12 years old. In too many cases Palestinian children are tortured, ill-treated, placed in solitary confinement and coerced into signing a confession in Hebrew, a language which most Palestinian children do not understand. Every year approximately 500-700 children are sentenced in Israeli courts.

Night raids are the most common form of arrest, during which Israeli soldiers will ransack an individual’s house, destroying personal property and abusing physically abusing family members. The arrested person will then be handcuffed and blindfolded before being thrown into the back of an Israeli military jeep, face-down, where the beatings, insults, and humiliation will continue.

Under Israeli military law, Palestinians can be interrogated for a period of 75 days and denied access to a lawyer for 60 days. Since 1967, approximately 75 Palestinian detainees have died as a result of torture while under Israeli interrogation.

Every day, Palestinian prisoners are on the front lines of struggle, facing torturous interrogation, nighttime raids, solitary confinement and relentless attacks on their rights at the hands of Israeli occupation forces. Those attacks are aided by international and corporate complicity, support and profiteering. Palestinian Prisoners’ Day is a critical time to stand against state and corporate complicity with Israeli imprisonment of Palestinian political prisoners.
Read more on the Addameer website

 Take action for justice to prisoners

1. Join Addameer social media campaign aims at raising awareness: hold a sign saying #Free_Palestinian_Political_Prisoners, or #StopAD (administrative detention campaign), #NotATarget (Human Rights Defenders campaign), and share either a picture of you holding a sign or just the hashtag along with a picture of a prisoner or a detainee on social media (twitter and facebook) to raise awareness.
2. Join Addameer’s campaigns and their Call to Action: Addameer has two major campaigns: Stop Administrative Detention campaign and the Human Rights Defenders. You could use any of addameer’s materials prepared for these two campaigns or any other materials on Addameer’s website.
3. Organize a protest, demonstration, speaking event or banner drop in your city, community or campus calling for the immediate release of all Palestinian political prisoners and to show solidarity with the hunger striking prisoners and detainees.

Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails call for popular support during projected hunger strike

Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails have called on the Palestinian Authority and the public to support them when they start an open-ended hunger strike on April 17. They said in a statement distributed by the Palestinian Prisoner Society (PPS) that as they embark on the hunger strike, they expect wide scale popular support through protests, sit-ins and rallies on campuses, trade s and everywhere to help achieve their demands blocked by the Israel Prisons Service (IPS).
The prisoners are demanding the implementation of the Geneva Conventions in their situation and to move them from jails inside Israel to one in the occupied territories, which would make it easier for their families to visit them. They also demand to be able to talk to their families through public phones installed in the prisons and to allow larger number of family members to visit them at least twice a month instead of the current one time and to treat the families with dignity at military checkpoints on their way to visit their imprisoned members.

The strike is expected to commence on April 17, which coincides with the Palestinian Prisoners’ Day. It was called for by incarcerated popular Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti and an estimated 1700 prisoners from various political factions are expected to participate in it.

Israeli reports said the Israeli government is bracing itself for possible outbreak of violence in the occupied territories once the strike begins since the issue of prisoners is considered one of the most sensitive ones that affect almost every Palestinian household. The Palestinian Authority constantly demands release of prisoners in any political deal knowing very well the positive impact of such a deal on the general public.
Read more on the Wafa website

Amnesty calls:
Israel must end ‘Unlawful and Cruel’ policies to Palestinian prisoners

Israel’s decades-long policy of detaining Palestinians from the occupied West Bank and Gaza, in prisons inside Israel, and depriving them of regular family visits is not only cruel but also a blatant violation of international law, said Amnesty International, ahead of a mass prisoner’s hunger strike which begins next week, to mark Palestinian Prisoner’s Day on 17 April.
Testimonies gathered by the organization from family members and Palestinian prisoners detained in the Israeli prison system shed light on the suffering endured by families who in some cases have been deprived from seeing their detained relatives for many years.
“Israel’s ruthless policy of holding Palestinian prisoners arrested in the Occupied Palestinian Territories in prisons inside Israel is a flagrant violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention. It is unlawful and cruel and the consequences for the imprisoned person and their loved ones, who are often deprived from seeing them for months, and at times for years on end, can be devastating,” said Magdalena Mughrabi, Deputy Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa at Amnesty International.

Read what International Middle East Media Centre website says

PHOTOS:
Palestinians protest in support of hunger-striking prisoners
Hundreds of Palestinians in Bethlehem protest in solidarity with hunger-striking Palestinian prisoners and to mark Palestinian Prisoners’ Day.
See photos and text by Oren Ziv and Faiz Abu Rmeleh

Bargouti threatened with execution on 2nd day of prisoners hunger strike

Intelligence and Transportation Minister Yisrael Katz said that Barghouti should have been given the death penalty instead of life imprisonment. Katz tweeted that carrying out the death penalty “would have prevented the hunger strike…When a despicable murderer like Barghouti protests in prison for improved conditions, while the relatives of those he murdered are still in pain, there is only one solution, death penalty for terrorists.”Katz said “the current law allows for the death penalty to be applied to convicted terrorists but prosecutors have consistently refrained from seeking the punishment.”
Meanwhile Israeli Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan vowed not to negotiate with Palestinian hunger strikers, saying that Barghouti had been moved to another prison and placed in solitary confinement. “They are terrorists and incarcerated murderers who are getting what they deserve and we have no reason to negotiate with them,” Erdan told occupation army radio. Barghouti’s call for the strike has given it added credibility, with the 57-year-old serving five life sentences over his role in the second Palestinian intifada or uprising.

Read what FARS  news agency says

Palestinian Prisoners Day 2017
Palestinians in London and supporters came together at the Palestinian Mission – to call for freedom for all Palestinian political prisoners, to mark the 40-day anniversary of the assassination of Basil al-Araj and to demand that the Palestinian Authority #EndCoordination with Israel.
View video

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