Show Your Support on Palestinian Prisoners Day

Call for international action: Show your support on Palestinian Prisoners day

12 April 2012 | International Solidarity Movement

This week International Solidarity Movement is calling for international solidarity in the run up to Palestinian Prisoners Day on the 17th April. The Palestinian prisoners struggle needs immediate international attention as Israel’s treatment of prisoners under a military judicial system starkly violates international law and fundamental human rights. According to Addammer there are currently 4,637 Palestinian political prisoners are kept in Israeli military jails and detention centers, including 320 administrative detainees.

Some of the primary objectives of the prisoners struggle are:
• To stop the system known as administrative detention, which allows the imprisonment of individuals without charge or trail
• To halt the practice of solitary confinement.
• To stop the use of torture and ill treatment. Palestinians are exposed to systematic ill and degrading treatment from the moment of arrest – both physiological and physical terrors are used as means of breaking the prisoners and getting details and information.
• To stop the illegal transference of prisoners from the occupied territories into Israeli borders. Every time Israel brings a prisoner from the West bank jails inside their borders – they are in clear violation with the 4th Geneva Convention.
• To stop the use of military courts for civilians.
• To stop arrest and imprisonment of vulnerable groups such as children, elder and disabled.
Besides the suffering of individual prisoners, Israel systematically uses collective punishment towards the relatives of prisoners. The journeys to visit your husband, wife, son, or daughter may take up to 15 hours as the prisoners are systematically placed as far from their home as possible. Furthermore, visitors will face degrading processes of strip search at the borders to Israel and at the entrance to the prisons. Sometimes they even get turned away.

“All people and governments of conscience in the world have an immediate responsibility to put pressure on Israel forcing them to respect International law and human rights!” says Faris Sabbah, from Addammer, the Prisoners support and Human Rights Association.

Take Action
You can:
• Organize a protest in front of the Israeli Embassy or consulate in your town
• Write letters to protest the violations of rights of Palestinian political prisoners and to call for an intervention to the International Committee of the Red Cross, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and your government or parliamentarians.
• Write letters to Palestinian prisoners expressing your support.

ENDS

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