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NPK-info 18-08-2004- Nederlands Palestina Komitee / www.palestina-komitee.nl
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Support Palestinian Prisoners on Strike
- Send letters of support: palprisoner@yahoo.com
- As Far As We Are Concerned, August 16, 2004, MIFTAH
"As far as I'm concerned they can strike for a day, a
month, until
death," said Israeli Internal Security Minister Hanegbi.
Zie berichten hierna.
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17 August 2004
En verzet
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August 17, 2004, ISM Media Office
- Boycott Israeli Apartheid
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NPK/WL, 18-8-2004
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For Immediate Release
16 August 2004
Support Palestinian Prisoners on Strike
Please Distribute Widely
Never Forget Our Comrades, Our Brothers and Sisters
Write to Striking Palestinian Prisoners
Al-Awda, the Palestine Right to Return Coalition is
sponsoring a letter
writing campaign of support to Palestinian prisoners,
especially those who
started a hunger strike on 15 August 2004.
We are asking organizations and individuals from all
over the world to send
their letters of support to our comrades in Israeli
prisons to:
palprisoner@yahoo.com
or by fax to: 1-928-752-8355 .
We will then present these letters to the prisoners and
their families.
Over 7500 Palestinian men, women, and children are
currently being held in
Israeli prisons. The prisoners are denied all basic
human rights guaranteed
to them under international law. Many are being
tortured.
These prisoners are resisting the brutal Zionist
occupation of Palestine in
all of its formations and it is essential that we
support them.
Once again, please send your letters of support to:
palprisoner@yahoo.com
or by fax to: 1-928-752-8355
Al-Awda, The Palestine Right to Return Coalition
PO Box 131352
Carlsbad, CA 92013
E-mail: info@al-awda.org
Fax: 1-802-609-9284
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As Far As We Are Concerned
By MIFTAH
August 16, 2004
"As far as I'm concerned they can strike for a
day, a month, until
death," said Israeli Internal Security Minister Tzahi
Hanegbi, in a
statement that would perhaps be comparable to Marie
Antoinette's infamously
callous "let them eat cake" remark, if present day ideas
on the universality
of human rights were not quite so far ahead of those
prevalent in
pre-revolution France. Given, however, that we are
living in the 21st
century, and given that there are a whole host of
conventions and principles
that now govern how humans should be treated by fellow
humans, Hanegbi's
statement, and the cruelty with which the Israeli
Prisons Authority is
dealing with the ongoing hunger strike called by
thousands of Palestinian
political prisoners in Israeli jails, makes Marie
Antoinette seem positively
angelic in comparison.
It is hard to know which is most lamentable: the
deplorable conditions
in the prisons, the lack of due process afforded to the
Palestinian
prisoners, or the dehumanizing "psychological warfare"
with which the
strikers are being punished.
The Israeli Prisons Authority has already instated
an astonishingly
cruel - if creative - array of measures to counter the
strike, the most
headline-grabbing among which was the setting up of
barbecues outside the
prisoners' cells to grill meat in front of the starving
prisoners. The IPA
has also halted family visits for strikers and removed
what it deems all
"basic amenities" from their cells; additionally, it has
prohibited the
strikers from access to radio, newspapers, television,
and every means of
communication among themselves. Today, on the second day
of the strike,
while security measures were stepped up throughout the
extensive detention
and prison system in Israel, prison guards made their
way through thousands
of festering cells confiscating cigarettes, candy, salt,
medicines, notes
passed on from fellow prisoners, and - most typical of
the paranoia so
characteristic of the Israeli security forces - all
pens, pencils and paper.
As Internal Security Minister Tzahi Hanegbi has
made clear, the last
thing on the mind of the Israeli Prison Authority as it
copes with what it
calls this "disturbance" is the well-being of the
strikers, or the demands
made by them; the decision, therefore, to "force feed"
the prisoners if
needed has not been taken to ensure their well-being,
but rather, to destroy
the objectives of the strike. Needless to add, not a
moment's consideration
is being paid to these objectives, which are ludicrously
modest when
compared to the response they have merited: the strikers
are merely asking
for minor improvements in their lives through basic
measures such as the end
to arbitrary strip searches, the improvement of
sanitation facilities, the
installation of public telephones, and more frequent
family visits. These
simple requests, however, have been interpreted by the
likes of Israeli
Prison Service Commissioner Lieutenant General Yakov as
"acts of terror"
that constitute a "prison takeover" and that must be
squashed, no matter
what. Hence the barbecues outside the cells; the
confiscated pens and
pencils; the removal of newspapers; the readied saline
drips.
However, none of these tactics of "psychological
warfare" has deterred
the strikers yet; if anything, their determination and
numbers have swollen
today, on the second day of the strike. As one striking
prisoner remarked to
the press, "a person who gives up food to achieve his
goals will not fall
because he doesn't get a newspaper or see television."
Over 7,500 Palestinians are currently incarcerated
as "political
prisoners" within Israel's draconian prison system. The
vast majority of
these has never been tried in any court of law, has
never been allowed
recourse to legal help or due process, and has never
been formally charged
with a specific crime. If the illegality of their arrest
were not bad
enough, the conditions in which these suffering
thousands are forced to
live - often for years on end - are by any definition
degrading and inhuman.
The Committee for the Families of Political Prisoners
and Detainees in the
West Bank released yesterday a document that contained a
woeful sampling of
common prisoner abuses, which included the following:
- Arbitrary and indiscriminate beating of
prisoners in their cells, in
prison courtyards and during transportation to and from
prisons.
- Arbitrary and indiscriminate firing of tear gas
into prisoner's
cells and prison courtyards and intimidation of
prisoners by guards entering
their cells with guns.
- Humiliating strip searches of prisoners in full
view of other
prisoners and guards each time they enter or exit their
cells.
- Subjecting prisoners to solitary confinement for
excessive periods
of time, for months and even years.
- Arbitrary imposition of financial penalties on
prisoners for minor
infractions, arbitrary revocation of visitation rights
and extended
confinement to cells as punishment for minor infractions
such as singing or
speaking too loudly
- Confining children with adult prisoners and
political prisoners with
criminals
- Withholding or delaying medical treatment and
the provision of
medication to sick detainees
- Severely restricting the category of family
members entitled to
visit prisoners thus denying visitation rights to other
close family members
- Arbitrary denial of travel permits to family
members of prisoners
living in the West Bank or Gaza so that they cannot
travel to prisons to see
their relatives
- Imposing conditions on travel for family members
and obstacles that
result in travel of a few hours being prolonged to 16 or
17 hours for a
45-minute visit
- Conducting humiliating strip searches of
visiting family members
even though they are usually separated from the
prisoners by a full glass
barrier as well as a wire mesh barrier.
- Providing such poor visitation facilities that
prisoners find it
difficult to see or hear their loved ones
- Maintaining prisoners on near starvation diets
that are insufficient
to sustain health.
- Applying rules concerning items that prisoners
may receive from
their families arbitrarily and inconsistently, on the
whim of the guards,
with each visit.
- Withdrawing studying privileges that in the past
allowed prisoners
to continue their high school or university studies
through correspondence
courses.
Despite these egregious infringements upon their
dignity and person,
the demands of the strikers remain, as noted above,
stunningly simple. They
are not asking for freedom; they are not asking for
compensation; they are
not asking for justice; they are asking, merely, for
access to public
telephones, for visits from their families, and for
clean toilets; for the
innocuous comforts that make us feel human, that afford
us, even when we are
desperate, a semblance of dignity.
As far as the state of Israel is concerned, the
strikers can strike
"for a day, for a month, until death" for this dignity,
but they will not
get it.
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