SANA'A April 23. 2024 (Saba) -The Palestinians, at home and in the diaspora, commemorate (Palestinian Prisoner’s Day) today, Wednesday, which falls on April 17 of each year, in light of the continuation of the “genocidal” war waged by the American and Western-backed Zionist enemy army on the Gaza Strip against civilians, children and women for the seventh month respectively.
Palestinian Prisoner's Day returns this year, under a fierce and unprecedented attack carried out by the Zionist enemy forces against the prisoners, after the seventh of last October, which led to the martyrdom of at least 16 prisoners and the injury of hundreds, under confirmations regarding secret prisons in which prisoners are tortured.
Since that day, which was adopted by the Palestinian National Council in 1974 as a national day for the freedom of prisoners, and the unification of efforts and activities to support them andtheir legitimate right to freedom, Prisoner’s Day has been and continues to be an immortal day that the Palestinian people commemorate annually in all their places of presence, at home and in the diaspora, through various means and forms.
Celebrating this day aims to remind the whole world of the Palestinian prisoners and the ugliest types of torture, violations and abuses they are subjected to on a daily basis in the prisons of the Zionist enemy, which exceeded all international and humanitarian norms and conventions, most notably international humanitarian law, the Fourth Geneva Convention, the principles of Human rights, and the Statute of the International Criminal Court.
It is noteworthy that this date was chosen to celebrate Palestinian Prisoner’s Day, as it witnessed the release of the first Palestinian prisoner named “Mahmoud Bakr Hijazi” in the first prisoner exchange between the Palestinians and the Zionist enemy entity.
In late March of 2008, in the Syrian capital, Damascus, the 20th Arab Summit approved the adoption of this day every year to celebrate it in all Arab countries, in solidarity with the Palestinian and Arab prisoners in Zionist detention centers.
Statistics from Palestinian official bodies and institutions concerned with prisoners’ affairs indicate that since 1948, the Zionist enemy authorities have arrested about a million Palestinians, including thousands of children, women and the elderly.
The Zionist enemy entity adopted detention as a means of oppression, torture, and collective punishment to oppress and control the Palestinians. It affected all groups and segments of Palestinian society, until it became a systematic behavior and a daily phenomenon.
This year's Palestinian Prisoner's Day also comes, and Palestinian prisoners are still being subjected to the worst types of retaliatory measures, which aim to deprive them of their most basic rights and to torture and abuse them. During its aggression against Gaza, the Zionist enemy arrested more than 5,000 prisoners from the Gaza Strip alone, which brought the number of prisoners within Enemy prisons to nearly 10,000 10,000 prisoners.
It is noteworthy that the Zionist enemy has enacted laws that are unfair to prisoners, especially the law to prosecute children under the age of 14, another to deprive them of education, and thirdly, it has legitimized the detention of their financial dues. Perhaps the most dangerous of these is the law of force-feeding prisoners who are on hunger strike to obtain their rights. The enemy has also legalized the detention of their bodies, so far, the enemy is detaining 496 bodies (not including the bodies of martyrs in the Gaza area after the war) in the numbers’ cemeteries and morgues, including 27 prisoners.
A draft law to execute prisoners was also proposed in 2015 and has not yet been approved by the Knesset, despite the demands of the so-called extremist Zionist Minister of National Security, Itamar Ben Gvir, to do so publicly last November.
According to a fact sheet issued by the Palestinian Prisoners’ Institutions, on the eve of Palestinian Prisoner’s Day, the number of prisoners in the prisons of the Zionist enemy currently amounts to more than 9,500 male and female prisoners. This figure does not include all Gaza detainees who are subject to the crime of (enforced disappearance), while the number of female prisoners among the total number of prisoners is 80, including three female prisoners who have been in detention since before October 7, as well as more than 200 children.
The paper explained that among the total number of prisoners in enemy prisons, the number of administrative prisoners reached more than 6,600 detainees, including 22 women and more than 40 children, while the number of detainees classified by the Zionist enemy as “illegal combatants” for the Gaza prisoners, according to a given data Prisons Administration is 849 detainees.
The number of sick prisoners in enemy prisons increased after the 7th of October. There are hundreds of sick and wounded, while the number of detained journalists is 56, including 45 who were arrested after the 7th of October and are still in detention, including four female journalists.
The number of former deputies in the Legislative Council who were detained reached 17 deputies.
The number of veteran prisoners who have been detained continuously since before the Oslo Agreement (1993) reached 21 prisoners, in addition to 11 prisoners who were arrested since before the signing of the agreement and were released as part of the “Loyalty to the Free” deal that took place in 2011, and they were re-arrested in 2014, the most prominent of whom is the prisoner Nael Barghouti. There are also hundreds of prisoners who spent more than 21 years in captivity.
The number of Palestinian prisoners serving life sentences and those awaiting life sentences is about 600 Palestinian prisoners, while the number of martyrs of the captive movement has risen to 252 martyrs since 1967, as the Zionist enemy continues to hide the identities of the majority of the martyrs of Gaza detainees who were martyred after October 7th, while The number of martyrs whose bodies are being held is 27 martyrs, the oldest of whom is the captive martyr Anis Dawla whose body has been detained since 1980.
After October 7, the total number of arrest campaigns reached more than 8,270 people in the West Bank, including occupied Jerusalem, including those whom the Zionist enemy released or kept in detention, including women, children, and journalists. Administrative detention orders after that date reached more than 5,168 orders, between New orders and renewal orders, including orders against children and women.
In addition to these arrest campaigns, the Zionist enemy forces carried out field executions, including members of the detainees’ families, and escalated field investigation operations that affected hundreds. The enemy also re-arrested 15 prisoners out of 240 who were released within the framework of the armistice agreement in November 2023.
On this anniversary, the government media office in the Gaza Strip issued a statement today, Wednesday, in which it spoke about the prisoners who were detained by the Zionist enemy during its aggression against the Strip, which has continued for about 194 days, and about the detention conditions they are experiencing.
The office confirmed in its statement that the enemy is practicing the most horrific forms of torture against prisoners in its prisons, calling on the world to assume its moral and legal responsibilities towards this humanitarian issue and to intervene urgently to protect the prisoners from the blatant violations they are exposed to
under the presence of a racist occupation government that is hateful towards every Palestinian.
For its part, the Islamic Resistance Movement Hamas said in a statement today, Wednesday: The liberation of prisoners from the prisons of the Zionist enemy is its top priority... calling for a global movement in victory for their just cause.
In turn, the factions of the Palestine Liberation Organization in Lebanon saluted the Palestinian people everywhere they are, on the anniversary of “Palestinian Prisoner’s Day,” and affirmed in a statement their solidarity with “the brave Palestinian prisoners in appreciation of their steadfastness, heroism, and courage in confronting the occupying authority, and also as an expression of loyalty to them and their cause that will remain alive.”
It called on the international community and international human rights and humanitarian organizations to "expose the practices of the Zionist enemy, and to intervene immediately and urgently to put pressure on the Zionist enemy entity and force it to obey international law and relevant agreements."
For its part, the Supreme Committee for Defending the Right of Return expressed the most profound expressions of solidarity with the families of the heroic prisoners who performed the miracle of steadfastness inside the prisons of the Zionist enemy.
In a statement on the occasion of Prisoner’s Day, the committee called for internationalizing the issue of prisoners within the framework of a struggle strategy and investing in all tools of international law to provide protection for prisoners and calling on United Nations institutions to condemn Zionist practices, stand by the Palestinian prisoners and their just demands, stop racist Zionist practices towards them, and force the enemy to release them. .
In addition, the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine said in a statement issued today on the occasion of Prisoner’s Day: “The prisoners are languishing in the prisons of the Zionist enemy in conditions that are the harshest in the history of the National Prisoner Movement, instead of hundreds of Gazan Palestinian male and female prisoners who are subjected to enforced disappearance and detention in secret prisons, and in conditions of detention and unprecedented sadistic campaigns of abuse since the beginning of the occupation of our Palestinian land.”
It stressed that the campaigns of abuse, revenge, starvation and torture against the heroic prisoners, the vanguard of the Palestinian people in resisting the occupation carried out by the fascist government in response to Tufan Al-Aqsa, are measures that are considered, from the perspective of international law, a war crime (which the colonial West is silent about) and come as a continuation of the war of extermination that it and its army are waging against the Palestinian people. "
Meanwhile, the Palestinian National Liberation Movement (Fatah) said in a statement: The issue of liberating male and female prisoners in the Zionist enemy’s detention centers is a national priority for the movement and its leadership... calling on the international community and human rights organizations to intervene immediately to oblige the colonial occupation system to comply with international law and relevant agreements.
It explained that this National Day comes in the context of the systematic war of extermination practiced by the occupation regime against the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip and the occupied West Bank, which coincides with the series of fascist measures taken by what is known as the Prison Administration Service of the Zionist enemy against male and female prisoners.
It is worth mentioning that the Zionist enemy government is still continuing its gross violations of the rights of Palestinian prisoners, represented by physical torture and ill-treatment, the policy of collective punishment, solitary confinement, psychological torture, administrative detention, searches and humiliation, deprivation of the most basic human rights, medical neglect, reducing meals, and preventing visits, severe beatings, exposing prisoners to high temperatures or humidity, and using inhumane methods of torture.
Z.E
resource : Saba
| more of (Reports) |