The Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign marked Palestinian Prisoners’ Day with information stalls and street theater in several locations in Ireland, as well as a speaking tour by Palestinian lawyer Aouda Zbidat.
IPSC branches in Dublin and Portadown organized outdoor information stalls on Saturday, 16 April, where they presented information and leaflets about Palestinian prisoners and performed displays where members represented Palestinian prisoners “behind bars,” highlighting Palestinian prisoners from various sectors of society.
Campaigners also focused on the call to boycott G4S, the British-Danish security conglomerate that provides security systems, control rooms and equipment to Israeli prisons, interrogation centers, checkpoints and police training centers. G4S is subject to a global boycott and has lost contracts with both private and public entities around the world following campaigns against its complicity in the imprisonment of Palestinians, as well as its involvement in youth incarceration and migrant detention in the US, UK, Australia and elsewhere. G4S has pledged to exit these businesses – including selling off its entire Israeli subsidiary – within the next one to two years, but Palestinian organizers have emphasized the necessity of keeping up the pressure on G4S so long as it remains part of the oppression and imprisonment of Palestinians.
They performed street theatre and stood blindfolded around a G4S van in Dublin, and distributed materials on the role of G4S in supporting the occupation.
The IPSC in Limerick, Cork, and Dublin hosted Palestinian lawyer Aouda Zbidat on 18, 19 and 20 April; she spoke about representing Palestinian prisoners with Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Assoiation before crowded halls. Zbidat discussed the issue of child prisoners, administrative detention, military courts, torture and hunger strikes in Israeli prisons.
Photos: Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign (IPSC)
