Charlotte Kates, international coordinator of Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, appeared on Press TV on 7 November to discuss the hunger strikes of Palestinian prisoners held without charge or trial. She appeared alongside Mick Napier of the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign on the Spotlight show hosted by Marzieh Hashemi.
As of Sunday, 14 November, five Palestinian prisoners are continuing their hunger strikes, including Kayed al-Fasfous, now on his 123rd day of strike. Doctors have warned that he is at risk of sudden death at any time as symptoms of blood clots have become apparent in his body; a fitness enthusiast and bodybuilder, he is now emaciated, and he is experiencing intermittent loss of consciousness, low blood pressure, irregular heartbeat and severe pains throughout his body.
Fasfous is on hunger strike to demand an end to his administrative detention, imprisonment without charge or trial on the basis of so-called “secret evidence.” Administrative detention orders are indefinitely renewable, and Palestinians are routinely jailed for years at a time under these orders. There are approximately 500 Palestinians jailed without charge or trial out of 4,650 Palestinian political prisoners in Israeli jails.
He is joined by four more hunger strikers, all demanding an end to their administrative detention: Alaa al-Araj, on strike for 98 days; Hisham Abu Hawash, on strike for 89 days; Ayyad Hraimi, on hunger strike for 52 days; and Louay al-Ashqar, on strike for 34 days.
Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network urges all supporters of Palestine to take action to support these Palestinian hunger strikers and all Palestinian prisoners struggling for freedom, for their own lives and for the Palestinian people. They are confronting the system of Israeli oppression on the front lines, with their bodies and their lives, to bring the system of administrative detention to an end. Take these actions below to stand with the hunger strikers and the struggle for liberation of Palestine, from the river to the sea!
