The voice of Palestine resounded on Tuesday, 11 July in Miraflores, Lima, Peru. The organizers of the demonstration emphsized that it was important to stand for Palestine, “because the call for justice cannot be cloistered within four walls, nor can it be silenced just because the Israeli oppressor cuts off innocent lives with increasing viciousness.”
Poets, singers and citizens in solidarity with the Palestinian liberation cause gathered to express their solidarity and hope for Palestine and to denounce and reject, as they said, “the barbaric Israeli Zionist occupation that is increasingly merciless against the Palestinian population, whose glorious resistance gives everything, even their lives, to liberate their homeland.”
“On 3 and 4 July, we witnessed new attacks against the Jenin refugee camp where 12 heroic he were killed by the cowardly occupying army. The reprehensible action also left a balance of around 300 injured, including children, the elderly and people in a precarious state of health. Fortunately for Palestine, the people in resistance overcame the monstrous Israeli military deployment that not even with its dozens of tanks and its warplanes could overwhelm the heroic Jenin,” they declared, urging people to join in the commemoration.
The political and cultural event included honouring the memory of the martyrs, poetry readings of Mahmoud Darwish, Rafeef Ziadah and Fadwa Tuqan, and Latin American songs of resistance and solidarity. Participants also displayed the photos of Palestinian prisoners, calling for their freedom, and laid flowers in memory of the Palestinian children killed by the occupation this year.
“We promise you, Palestine, that every day, until your freedom, we will live renewing that revolutionary ardor, with the fire of the soul of your men, your women, your boys, your girls, your heroes and your outstanding martyrs,” the organizers affirmed.
PRESS RELEASE
The latest massive attack by the Israeli colonial army on the Palestinian refugee camp in Jenin left 12 dead, more than 100 injured and 3,000 forcibly displaced. This is not the first such instance. So far, these attacks have already killed more than 180 people in occupied Palestine in 2023 alone. The occupation forces violently invaded on the night of Monday, 3 July, destroying everything in their path. In 48 hours they destroyed streets, sidewalks, houses and the Freedom Theatre, where the children of the camp had a space for relaxation and safety. The hospital was also not spared from tear gas bombs and the Israeli army prevented ambulances from assisting the wounded.
The 20,000 inhabitants of Jenin refugee camp are refugees from the 1948 Nakba, when Israel began the invasion of Palestine. And today they were forced to flee again: 3,000 people, entire families, children, women thrown out into the open!
As in other cases, there were also detainees. As of April this year, there were 4,900 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli military jails. Of which, nearly 1100 are held under administrative detention without charge or trial, 160 children and 37 women. The guards – Israeli soldiers – subject the prisoners to the cruelest torture, as well as unjustifiably placing them in solitary for long periods, subjecting them to hunger and cold and deplorable hygiene situations or not offering them adequate medical care in case of illness. This was the case with Khader Adnan, and now Ahmad Manasra and Walid Daqqah, among others.
From Volunteers for Palestine – Peru we stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people, subject to an apartheid regime, a brutal and long ethnic cleansing and the theft of their land imposed by the Israeli colonial state since 1948. We stand in solidarity with the Palestinian resistance, which is confronting one of the most powerful armies in the world and its accomplices.
Israel is a state that lives for war, its profits come from war and weapons development for the United States and its allies, from increasingly sophisticated and lethal techniques of warfare and surveillance. These weapons and methods are tested upon the Palestinian people in their successive bombardments of Gaza, with their surveillance cameras installed throughout the West Bank, and with their armed drones, which circulate permanently in Gaza and now, Jenin. Weapons that they later sell to states like Peru to attack peaceful protesters.
We demand sanctions against this criminal regime and that its authorities be tried as war criminals before the International Court of Justice.
Free Palestine from the River to the Sea! Long live the Palestinian People!
11 July 2023, Lima, Peru.
