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4/2012
Al Mezan Condemns Inhumane Practices against Sheikh Khader Adnan and Calls for Wider Solidarity Campaign with Palestinian Detainees in Israeli Prisons
Sheikh Khader Adnan, who has been held in Israeli prison since the morning of Saturday 17 December 2011 when Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) broke into his house in Jenin and detained him, is continuing his hunger strike. According to the information available to the Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, Sheikh Adnan has been on open-ended hunger strike since the time of his detention, in protest against the inhumane circumstances that Palestinian detainees suffer under administrative detention and incarceration in Israeli prisons.
It should be noted that hunger strikes are a tool to defend human rights and the achievements attained during previous years of struggle against poor and humiliating detention conditions. Palestinian detainees have gone on hunger strike tens of times, most recently in September 2011, in protest against the inhumane and cruel treatment they receive in Israeli prisons and detention centers.
The facts demonstrate that the IOF continues in its grave violations of international humanitarian law (IHL), human rights, and the United Nations’ Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners. The IOF continues to arbitrarily detain Palestinians. There are approximately 6,000 Palestinians currently held in Israeli prisons and detention centers. Of those, 25 are members of the Palestinian Legislative Council. The IOF continues to deprive Palestinian detainees of their rights to visitation by family and lawyers, education, and access to books and magazines, and prevents detainees from purchasing needed goods and receiving appropriate medical treatment. Prison authorities provide food of inadequate quality and quantity. The IOF is also known to place Palestinian detainees in solitary confinement for lengthy periods of time.
Al Mezan condemns the arrest of Sheik Khader Adnan and calls for his release. Al Mezan emphasizes that it will continue in its efforts to defend Palestinian detainees and expose Israeli violations of their rights. In this context, however, Al Mezan asserts that all the efforts exerted by human rights organizations cannot achieve the hoped-for success as long as Palestinian political society is not unified.
Al Mezan reiterates its previous calls on the international community to intervene to end Israel’s systematic and grave abuses against Palestinian detainees. It also calls for peace, democracy, and human rights supporters around the world to intervene to expose Israeli violations of international law, particularly those comprised by its Unlawful Combatant Law and its practice of administrative detention. Al Mezan calls on these forces to exert pressure on their governments to uphold their moral and legal obligations under international law, to end the systematic Israeli violations of Palestinian rights, and to provide for detainees’ needs, including health care and family visitation. It also calls on the international community to take effective and urgent action to ensure the release of all Palestinian detainees.
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