Break the silence on Al-Qeeq and Palestine, London protesters tell BBC

30 January 2016

London activists protested outside BBC headquarters on Friday, 29 January, denouncing the network’s silence on the hunger strike of Palestinian journalist Mohammed al-Qeeq, imprisoned without charge or trial under administrative detention in Israeli jails. Al-Qeeq, on his 67th day of hunger strike, is in critical condition, has lost over 30 kilos and faces a severe threat to his life. He is held in HaEmek hospital, where he is shackled hand and foot to his hospital bed.

The protest, organized by Inminds, demanded the release of al-Qeeq and his fellow Palestinian prisoners. Al-Qeeq, who has been denied access to an independent physician, is striking for his freedom. He is held without charge or trial, and was interrogated for over 15 hours a day, shackled to a chair in stress positions. He began his hunger strike to protest his torture under interrogation, and continued the strike to demand his freedom from administrative detention without charge or trial. An Israeli military court ordered him to six months (indefinitely renewable) imprisonment under an administrative detention order on 24 December. Al-Qeeq is one of 660 administrative detainees, among 6800 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.

As Al-Qeeq’s medical situation becomes more urgent, protests are growing around the world to demand his freedom. On Friday, in addition to the London protest, demonstrations for Al-Qeeq’s freedom took place in New York City, Berlin, and towns and cities throughout Palestine.

Video:

Photos via Inminds.com:

5 February, NYC: Protest to free hunger strikers and all Palestinian prisoners

30 January 2016

Friday, 5 February
4:00 pm
G4S Offices, NYC – 17 W 44th St, NYC
Facebook Event: https://www.facebook.com/events/178990359130265/
Organized by Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network

Palestinian journalist Mohammed al-Qeeq, held by Israel under administrative detention without charge or trial, had been on hunger strike for 73 days on Friday. He is shackled to a hospital bed in HaEmek hospital in Afula, in critical condition. He is demanding his immediate release, and his medical situation is urgent.

Additionally, Kayed Abu Rish, 45, from Al-Ein refugee camp in Nablus, had been on hunger strike for 14 days Friday. He is protesting the renewal of his administrative detention order. He has been held without charge or trial since January 2015. In August 2015, he engaged in a hunger strike, which he ended after a commitment to not renew his detention. Instead, a new order for six months administrative detention was issued and confirmed on 1 February.

G4S, the world’s largest firm company and second-biggest private employer, equips Israeli prisons and detention centers where 6,800 Palestinian political prisoners, including 660 administrative detainees, are held and tortured, as well as the occupation forces and infrastructure that routinely massacre Palestinians while holding millions under military rule.

Join us to answer a united appeal by Palestinian prisoners for escalated boycotts of G4S.

Demand G4S immediately end its contracts with Israeli prisons and detention centers, occupation and security forces and checkpoints, and that Israel release al-Qeeq and Abu Rish, other administrative detainees and all Palestinian political prisoners.

Support the Palestinian people, the Palestinian prisoners, the Palestinian Resistance, and the liberation of Palestine, from the river to the sea.

New Yorkers take to the streets to demand freedom for Al-Qeeq, all Palestinian prisoners

29 January 2016

New Yorkers took to the streets on Friday, 29 January to demand the immediate release of imprisoned Palestinian journalist Mohammed al-Qeeq, on his 66th day of hunger strike and shackled to his hospital bed in critical condition.

Organized by Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, the protest outside the New York City offices of G4S demanded al-Qeeq’s immediate release as well as an end to G4S’ contracts to provide security systems to Israeli prisons and checkpoints. Today’s New York City protest for Al-Qeeq joined events in London, Berlin, and in various towns and cities in Palestine.

Al-Qeeq, 33, launched his hunger strike on 25 November 2015. A correspondent for Al-Majd TV, he was interrogated in stress positions for up to 15 hours a day and denied access to a lawyer for a month; while he was on hunger strike, he was ordered to administrative detention without charge or trial.

G4S, the world’s largest security corporation, provides the security systems that operate Israeli prisons that hold over 6,800 Palestinian prisoners, including 660 administrative detainees like Al-Qeeq. Palestinian prisoners have urged a boycott of G4S and there is a growing global boycott campaign demanding institutions end their contracts with this corporation complicit in torture, colonialism and apartheid.

Samidoun in New York organizes weekly protests outside the G4S offices, highlighting G4S’ involvement in the torture and isolation of Palestinian prisoners, and demanding freedom for all imprisoned Palestinians.

Photos by Joe Catron.

Czech organizations urge Bulgaria to reject extradition, stand with Omar Nayef Zayed

29 January 2016

The International Solidarity Movement – Czech Republic sent a letter of protest to the Bulgarian Minister of Justice, the Bulgarian Foreign Minister, and the Bulgarian Embassy in Prague, urging that Bulgaria reject the Israeli request to extradite Omar Nayef Zayed, former Palestinian prisoner who has lived in Bulgaria for the past 22 years.

Zayed, a former Palestinian political prisoner, was imprisoned in 1986, convicted by an Israeli military court of participating in a Palestinian resistance action against an Israeli settler in occupied east Jerusalem. After a 40-day hunger strike, he escaped Israeli military custody from a Bethlehem-area hospital, fleeing Palestine. He has lived in Bulgaria for 22 years and has a Bulgarian wife and children. In December 2015, the Israeli embassy in Sofia requested the Bulgarian government extradite Zayed; Bulgarian police raided his family home, but he was not present. He then took refuge in the Palestinian Embassy in Sofia. An international campaign is demanding that Bulgaria reject the extradition request and protect Zayed rather than serving as the long arm of the Israeli occupation forces.

Six Czech organizations signed on to the letter, urging Bulgaria to “reject the extradition request from Israel for Omar Nayef Zayed and cancel any and all warrants for Zayed’s arrest, imprisonment or extradition, and instead allow him to remain and continue his life with his family.” The letter was signed by representatives of ISM-Czech Republic, the Palestinian Club in the Czech Republic, the Islamic Foundation, Friends of Palestine, Initiative for a Just Peace in the Middle East, and Left Perspective.

See the full PDF (Download file):

Berlin protest demands freedom for imprisoned Palestinian journalist al-Qeeq on 66th day of hunger strike

29 January 2016

Demonstrators gathered at Potsdamer Platz in Berlin on Friday, 29 January, to call for freedom for Palestinian prisoners, particularly Mohammed al-Qeeq, the Palestinian journalist imprisoned without charge or trial who has been on hunger strike for 66 days and is currently in critical condition; and Ahmad Manasrah, the 14-year-old Palestinian boy whose injury, imprisonment and interrogation were seen on video around the world.

Organized by the Palästinensicher Frauenverband in Deutschland (Palestinian Women’s Association in Germany), the protesters called for freedom for all Palestinian prisoners, denouncing the Israeli occupation and its system of administrative detention, military courts and mass political imprisonment over the Palestinian people.

Photos by Afif El-Ali and Palestinian Women’s Association in Germany:

Statement, event in Rome call for justice for Omar Nayef Zayed, all Palestinian prisoners

29 January 2016

Fronte Palestina, a Palestine support organization in Italy, issued a statement in support of former Palestinian prisoner Omar Nayef Zayed, currently taking refuge in the Palestinian embassy in Bulgaria. The Israeli state is seeking his extradition from Bulgaria – where Zayed has lived for the past 22 years with his Bulgarian wife and children, since he escaped from Israeli custody in 1990.

There is an international campaign to defend Zayed and all former Palestinian prisoners, being sought relentlessly for further persecution by the Israeli occupation.

The Fronte Palestina statement reads: (see the Italian statement)

We stand in solidarity with Comrade Omar Nayef Zayed, Palestinian struggler who took refuge in Bulgaria 22 years ago. Zayed was arrested in 1986 and sentenced to life imprisonment by a Zionist court but in 1990 managed to escape from the hands of his captors, taking refuge in Bulgaria.

On 15 December 2015, the Zionist government requested the extradition, after which Bulgarian authorities went to the home of the comrade to arrest him, but did not find him there. Omar Nayef Zayed then proceeded to seek asylum at the embassy of the Palestinian National Authority’s Diplomatic Representation in Sofia, where he remains now.

What is happening is clearly another political attack on former Palestinian prisoners, as happened with the arrest of Rasmea Odeh in the United States on 22 October 2013. The persecution of Zayed is yet another attempt to criminalize the Palestinian people, diaspora communities and political exiles. It is no surprise that this takes place in Europe in a climate of emergency and the “war on terror,” adopting the Zionist model of repression, social control and armored borders.

The comrades of the Fronte Palestina join international calls to mobilize, especially at the Bulgarian diplomatic representations (embassies and consulates) to oppose the extradition of Omar Nayef Zayed to the so-called “justice” of the Zionist colonial enterprise and to pressure to ensure that the PNA diplomatic representatives do not allow his deportation or extradition.

It is clear that the Zionist entity’s extradition request demonstrates that they want to persecute Palestinian militants everywhere, while in occupied Palestine they continue to carry out devastating projects of ethnic cleansing and savage mass repression.

The cause of Omar is the same as that of the approximately 6800 Palestinian political prisoners who resist in Zionist jails, in support of which Fronte Palestina is organizing a solidarity campaign since October 2014, including policy initiatives, mobilization, support and fundraising.

In the current phase, in which we again see the Palestinian people confronting the occupier through the intifada, we think it is important to reinvigorate the campaign, as a concrete contribution to those who have been able to transform places of detention and suppression into barricades of resistance.

NO EXTRADITION OF OMAR NAYEF ZAYED!
FREEDOM FOR ALL PALESTINIAN PRISONERS!

The statement from Fronte Palestina followed a one-day conference organized by the group in Rome, which included discussions of Palestinian political prisoners as well as the case of Georges Ibrahim Abdallah, Arab struggler for Palestine, which was discussed by Coup Pour Coup 31 over Skype from France. Abdallah has been imprisoned for 32 years in French prisons; there is a large French, Lebanese and international campaign for his freedom. Other speakers addressed the current situation in Palestine and the region:

Hares Boys – 5 Palestinian teens – sentenced to 15 years in Israeli prison

29 January 2016

The Hares Boys – five Palestinian teenagers accused of throwing stones at a settler road – were sentenced to 15 years each in Israeli occupation prisons on 28 January, following a plea agreement that ended their military trials, which stretched on for years.

Muhammad Suleiman, Tamer Souf, Ammar Souf, Ali Shamlawi, and Muhammad Kleib were sentenced by the Israeli military court, after their families paid fines of 30,000 shekels each. The Free the Hares Boys campaign noted that the funds to pay the fines were raised with the support of people around the world who contributed to support the boys’ families. If they were unable to pay the fines, an even longer prison sentence would be imposed.

The boys – aged 16 and 17 when detained on 15 March 2013 – were accused of throwing stones at a settler-only road near their village by Israeli occupation forces, who raided their village and targeted young boys in mass arrests. Two settler vehicles had a car accident and a young girl passenger in one of the cars was seriously injured, and died two years later from pneumonia.

As the Free the Hares Boys campaign noted in 2013, “If the boys are convicted, this case would set a legal precedent which would allow the Israeli military to convict any Palestinian child or youngster for attempted murder in cases of stone-throwing.”

The Free the Hares Boys Campaign posted a response to their sentencing on Thursday:

THE DAY THAT JUSTICE DIED

It is now official: the five youth from Hares village will be kept locked up in a zionist occupation prison for 15 years. They are to see freedom and hug their mothers again in 2028.

All this without any real evidence of their supposed guilt, except for “confessions” signed after torture when these boys were only 16, taken away in the middle of the night without access to a lawyer, beaten and abused by armed men in uniform.

All this after almost 3 years going back and forth between zionist prison and military court, where sessions are conducted in Hebrew which none of the boys speak, and where the three individuals in judge chairs are military personnel. Of that same military that has been occupying Palestine for decades.

All this after almost 3 years of protests, demonstrations, letter-writing, petition-signing, and other forms of solidarity from good people around the globe who believe in justice.

Mohammed Kleib, Mohammed Suleiman, Ali Shamlawi, Tamer Souf, and Ammar Souf. Five beautiful boys who loved to play football and were getting ready for their school-leaving exams.

These boys’ lives have been taken away from them. Five tragedies, five families that lost their sons to the zionist system that seeks to destroy Palestine and the Palestinians. Boy by boy, mother by mother, family by family.

Thank you all. Thank you for believing in justice. Thank you for fighting for it. Thank you for standing up to zionist crimes.

Perhaps justice still has a chance.

And remember – no one of us is truly free, until all are.

Palestinian administrative detainee on hunger strike for 15 days, demanding release

29 January 2016

Wissam al-Heimouni, a Palestinian prisoner held in administrative detention without charge or trial by Israeli occupation forces, is currently on hunger strike; he began his strike 15 days ago.

Held in Megiddo prison, Heimouni, 36, from al-Khalil, was previously arrested five times; he was arrested on 24 December 2015 and then ordered to administrative detention for four months.

Heimouni is demanding his immediate release; he joins striking Palestinian journalist Mohammed al-Qeeq, also held under administrative detention without charge or trial. Al-Qeeq has been on hunger strike for 66 days; he is shackled to a hospital bed in HaEmek hospital in Afula, in critical condition. He is demanding his immediate release as well, and his medical situation is urgent.

Palestinian parliamentarians arrested, imprisoned without charge or trial

29 January 2016

Israeli occupation forces issued a four-month administrative detention order against Hatem Qufeisha, 56, Palestinian parliamentarian, only five days after arresting him, invading his home in Al-Khalil on 24 January.

He is held in Ofer prison, with no charge or trial. He has spent over 143 months in administrative detention in the past and has been repeatedly imprisoned.

Meanwhile, on 28 January, Israeli occupation forces arrested and imprisoned Palestinian parliamentarian Mohammed Abu Teir – and at least 22 other Palestinians in the West Bank and occupied Jerusalem – in early-morning raids.

Abu Teir has spent 32 years in Israeli prison under numerous arrests; he is a Palestinian Jerusalemite whose residency was stripped on 8 October 2010 by the Israeli occupation, forced into the West Nank from his home city, on the basis of “betrayal of loyalty to Israel” because he ran in the Palestinian Legislative Council elections on the Change and Reform Slate, associated with the Hamas movement.

He was last released in July 2015 after 25 months in administrative detention.

Abu Teir and Qufeisha join five more imprisoned members of the Palestinian Legislative Council: prominent leftist, feminist and prisoner advocate Khalida Jarrar, serving 15 months in Israeli prison; Palestinian political leader and general secretary of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine Ahmad Sa’adat, serving 30 years in Israeli occupation prisons; Palestinian political leader and member of the Fateh Central Council, Marwan Barghouti, serving five life sentences; Mohammed Jamal Natsheh of al-Khalil, of the Change and Reform Bloc, held in administrative detention without charge or trial since March 2013; and Hassan Yousef of Beitunia, a senior Hamas leader and member of the PLC, held in administrative detention without charge or trial since 20 October 2015.

Dozens of members of the Palestinian Legislative Council have been imprisoned by the Israeli occupation, many serving lengthy periods held in administrative detention without charge or trial. The Inter-Parliamentary Union, a global alliance of parliamentarians, has called for the freedom of imprisoned Palestinian parliamentarians.

66 days of hunger strike: Mohammed al-Qeeq’s life at severe risk

29 January 2016

Palestinian journalist Mohammed al-Qeeq, imprisoned without charge or trial under administrative detention, is on his 66th day of hunger strike and in critical condition at HaEmek hospital.

Despite his severe health condition, al-Qeeq has pledged to continue his hunger strike until he wins his freedom. Ashraf Abu Sneinah, Al-Qeeq’s lawyer, said that he has repeatedly fallen unconscious and into a coma and has lost 30 kilograms (66 pounds).

Al-Qeeq, 33, a correspondent for Al-Majd TV, has been ordered to six months administrative detention without charge or trial; despite his critical medical condition, he is shackled on both legs and one arm to his hospital bed, and is guarded by Israeli prison guards who repeatedly bring him food and eat in front of him. Physicians for Human Rights also reported that they were denied access to visit and examine al-Qeeq in the hospital despite scheduling the visit for 27 January and having it approved. “PHRI condemns the HaEmek Hospital’s decision, which reflects the inappropriate conduct that was described by Al-Qeeq until now: the forced treatment and the pressure to end his hunger strike.”

Amnesty International has spoken out about al-Qeeq’s detention. “The only way Mohammad al-Qeq feels he is able to challenge his detention, without charge, is with his body,” said Sunjeev Bery, Middle East-North Africa advocacy director at Amnesty International USA, speaking to Al Jazeera. “Under administrative detention, Palestinian detainees have been imprisoned without knowing why they’re being imprisoned or when they might be released.”

The European Union’s missions in Jerusalem and Ramallah issued a statement “expressing their longstanding concern about the extensive use by Israel of administrative detention without formal charge.” In addition to al-Qeeq’s case, the statement highlighted the administrative detention of Eteraf Rimawi of the Bisan Center for Research and Development, and Mohammed Abu Sakha, the Palestinian Circus School trainer.

“The EU calls for the full respect of international human rights obligations towards all prisoners. Detainees have the right to be informed about the charges underlying any detention, must be granted access to legal assistance, and be subject to a fair trial,” concluded the statement.

Previously, Reporters Without Borders issued a statement on the detained journalist: “RSF is concerned not only about the conditions in which he is being held but also the unclear circumstances of his arrest. RSF is not in a position to verify the reasons for his arrest but notes the lack of any formal charge and the murky procedure used to hold him. It therefore calls on the Israeli authorities to free him and to ensure that their investigation is transparent and impartial.”

Meanwhile, grassroots support for al-Qeeq is growing as his hunger strike escalates. In New York City, Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network and fellow activists will protest today, Friday 29 January outside the offices of G4S, the global security corporation that provides security equipment and control rooms to Israeli prisons and checkpoints, demanding the immediate release of al-Qeeq. Inminds also organized a protest in London outside BBC headquarters on Friday, demanding his release and denouncing the mainstream media silence on the case.

American Muslims for Palestine called for Al-Qeeq’s immediate release in a statement, urging supporters to contact the US State Department about the case. “While AMP condemns the detention of all Palestinian prisoners, the use of administrative detention is particularly egregious because it denies the person of all due process, something that flies in the face of democratic values,” said AMP Chairman Dr. Hatem Bazian.

In Bil’in, the Popular Committee Against the Wall’s weekly protest focused on supporting al-Qeeq; the protest was attacked by Israeli soldiers firing tear gas. Protests in Ramallah, al-Khalil, and Nablus also urged the immediate release of Al-Qeeq.

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