Saturday, 22 January
2 pm
Garema Place, Civic
Canberra, Australia
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/2021889451321806
Palestinian prisoners are consistently engaged in a difficult struggle inside Israeli jails against arbitrary laws and unrestrained brutality. Prisoners are regularly forced to go beyond the accepted limits of human endurance to assert their dignity and the most basic of rights, often with the power of empty stomachs in the face of cruelty designed to degrade and break people’s will. Recently, Hisham Abu Hawash, held without a charge or trial as an administrative detainee, was only able to extract freedom after a long 141 day hunger strike.
The Palestinian prisoners’ struggle inside the occupation’s prison system is a pillar of the Palestinian anti-colonial struggle for national liberation. The Palestinian prisoners’ movement represents the national liberation struggle in the course of its confrontations inside prisons which the prisoners sustain with a steadfastness which transcends the self. Ahmad Sa’adat, a leader in Palestinian national liberation movement, is an embodiment of the prisoners’ struggle. To demand freedom for Ahmad Sa’adat is to support the prisoners’ movement and international solidarity is a valuable dimension of this movement.
“The imprisonment of Palestinian political prisoners – some of the strongest organizers, activists and leaders of Palestinian society – is a deeply felt wound in the Palestinian community. The freedom of these prisoners, imprisoned because of their desire to see their homeland free, is a necessary part of achieving justice for the Palestinian people.” [1]
The colonial objective to imprison Palestinian resistance requires that the struggles of prisoners remain pre-eminent in popular consciousness and that people collectively maintain a global movement which demands freedom of all Palestinian political prisoners and dismantling of the occupation’s prison system.
Ahmad Sa’adat also embodies the revolutionary Palestinian vision which seeks to establish a democratic state in historic Palestine on the basis of equality and enfranchisement for all and which endeavours foremost to serve the interests of the oppressed classes. This revolutionary vision is situated, geographically and politically, at the centre of resistance against the long imperialist war which, in order to maintain uncontested access for capitalist accumulation, imposes death, suffering and destitution on masses across the Arab world while simultaneously denying the opportunity for people-centred development through imposition of debilitating economic sanctions, criminalisation and ousting of progressive political fronts, and installation of regressive political regimes whose interests are aligned with imperialist interests.
The imperialist machinations and war in the region within which the Palestinian anti-colonial struggle exists also make the nature of capitalism unnervingly transparent. Similar to other capitalist industry, the weapons industry exercises considerable political control and seeks an expanding market for its products. That is to say, it seeks continuity and expansion of war during which it directly consumes human life and the world in order to make high profit.
It is pertinent to note that survivors of colonialism and imperialism find it difficult to find refuge. The suffering of asylum seekers who are held under indefinite administrative detention is linked to the suffering of prisoners of Palestinian struggle who are held under administrative detention or imprisoned on fabricated charges and whose resistance is situated at the centre of the same imperialist war which displaces and drives people to seek asylum.
The purpose of prison on the Australian continent today is not different from what it has been in the past. It is one of the institutions which maintains control and perpetrates harm on successive generations of First Nations. Its dismantling in Australia is as crucial for decolonisation as it is in Palestine.
Please join this solidarity action to briefly discuss some of the aspects of the Palestinian anti-colonial struggle, the discernible lines between justice and injustice in this struggle, and the wider political context of imperialist war which situates Palestinian struggle firmly within a significant front against capitalism, colonialism and imperialism. We will use this time to distribute flyers with details of Ahmad Sa’adat’s case to the public.
We will also raise the names of Hidme Markam, Victor Yeimo, Khurram Parvez and Julian Assange who are among the prisoners of people’s struggle against capitalism, colonialism and imperialism.
[1] This provides background to Ahmad Sa’adat’s case: https://freeahmadsaadat.org/background/
