Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network strongly condemns the Dutch state decision to ban Samidoun’s European Coordinator Mohammed Khatib from entering the Netherlands for a period of two years. We believe this decision has no legal ground, just like civil servants of Dutch anti-terror and immigration institutions who advised against issuing this ban.We are fighting this ban on a legal and political level and we call upon the Palestinian people and their friends and supporters in the Netherlands to continue and intensify the struggle to end the genocide, end the occupation and liberate Palestine from the river to the sea.
The entry ban issued against Mohammed comes while the Zionist genocide in Gaza is killing tens of thousands of Palestinians with unlimited support from the Dutch government. This repression is another form of support for the genocide and an attempt to shut down every voice of opposition to Dutch complicity with the occupation. Furthermore, the ban is a racist and colonial tool used to limit the freedom of movement of a Palestinian refugee who already cannot enter his homeland. It is also intended as an attack on the Palestinian liberation movement as a whole and specifically on the thousands of Palestinian prisoners struggling and organizing under torture and severe abuse from the Zionist regime inside its colonial jails.
The Dutch Minister of Asylum and Migration, Marjolein Faber, belongs to the PVV, the most outspoken Zionist party in the Netherlands and the largest party in the current governing coalition. The PVV is a supporter of implementing occupation-style administrative detention, meaning imprisonment without charge or trial, in the Netherlands. The party has close ties with the most extreme “Israeli” political parties.
The decision to bar Mohammed Khatib from entering the Netherlands is not only an attack against him personally, but against the Palestinian diaspora and people as a whole. It is an attack on refugees and immigrants that speak out against the colonial and imperialist interventions in their home countries. Amid a time that millions of Palestinians, Arabs and internationals around the world are confronting the genocide, the imperialist states feel the need to not only support Israel with money and weapons, but to actively repress any dissenting voice. The repressive attacks on the movement around the world, especially in the imperial core, are part and parcel of the full imperialist participation in the genocide in the United States, Canada, Germany, France, Britain, the Netherlands and elsewhere.
Mohammed Khatib was invited to speak at Radboud University Nijmegen this Monday, 28 October, about “Criminalisation, Diaspora & Starvation,” ironically made even more relevant by the decision to deny him entry to the Netherlands. As Samidoun, we reiterate our support to the Student Intifada and all those who are standing up against genocide, Zionism, colonialism and imperialism. We invite everyone to come to Radboud University this Monday 28 October at 12:15 pm.
From Nijmegen to Palestine: resistance is not a crime!
Hands off Palestinian Activists! Defend Palestinian Resistance!