Samidoun participated in São Paulo, Brazil in a political forum on “State Terrorism and Incarceration from Occupied Palestine to Brazil” on January 29, organized by the Movimento Palestina Para Tod@s (MOP@T), a youth-led Palestine solidarity and support organization in Sao Paulo focused on building connections between movements for justice inside Brazil and internationally.

The forum, which included Charlotte Kates of Samidoun, Palestinian activist and writer Khaled Barakat of the Campaign to Free Ahmad Sa’adat, and representatives of the 2 October Network, which organizes for prison justice and abolition in Brazil, and the Organization of Friends and Family of Prisoners in Brazilian prisons. All of the speakers addressed the impacts of mass incarceration on oppressed communities, racist injustice systems, and the relationship between mass incarceration and repression of movements.

Brazil has the third largest prison population in the world, a high level of police brutality and repression directed both against political movements and against poor and racialized communities, and a racist prison and policing system that targets Black youth in particular for repression, confinement and imprisonment. The representatives of the Brazilian movement discussed the impact of this level of mass imprisonment upon the families and communities of incarcerated people, including strip searching and abuse of family visitors and ongoing police harassment.

Kates addressed the system of mass incarceration in Palestine and its similarities – and differences – with racist and colonial oppression and imprisonment in the United States, Canada and Europe, noting that 1 in 3 Black men can be expected to be imprisoned at one point in his life in the US, and that the imprisonment rate of Indigenous people in Canada is 10 times that of white Canadians.

Discussing the Black liberation movement and Indigenous struggles for sovereignty, she addressed the use of mass imprisonment as a weapon of state terror against communities. In Palestine, where the racist, settler colonial state of Israel has been imposed upon the indigenous people of Palestine, 1 out of every 4 Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza will be imprisoned in Israeli prisons, while 40% of Palestinian men have been imprisoned. “Imprisonment is part of the ongoing Nakba, the Zionist campaign to erase Palestinian existence and resistance, and it symbolizes the oppression of all Palestinians: the over six million refugees forced from their homes and lands and denied their right to return; Gaza under siege and under fire; Jerusalem under attack and demolition; Palestinians in the West Bank struggling to live as a Wall of apartheid cuts them from their land; and Palestinians in ’48 facing dozens of racist laws and police murder,” Kates said.

She discussed the use of administrative detention, imprisonment without charge or trial, against Palestinians, including 500 current administrative detainees out of 6,500 Palestinian political prisoners, repression inside the prisons, and the denial of family visits to Palestinian prisoners as a method of collective punishment against the entire Palestinian people, as nearly every Palestinian family has been touched by mass imprisonment.

Three cases of Palestinian political prisoners were discussed at length: that of the child prisoner, 14-year-old Malaak al-Khatib, a teen girl who is the youngest of nearly 200 Palestinian childrenin Israeli jails; imprisoned Palestinian student and folkloric dancer Lina Khattab; and political leader, Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine General Secretary Ahmad Sa’adat, who was imprisoned by Israel as well as in collaboration with the United States, Britain and the Palestinian Authority.

The discussion also addressed the movement for boycott, divestment and sanctions and the demand to free Palestinian prisoners as part of the BDS campaign. In particular, the campaign against G4S, which is involved in human rights abuses in detention and imprisonment around the world – including in Brazil, where BDS campaigns are focusing on its involvement in private prisons, and in Palestine – is growing internationally.

Palestinian writer and activist Khaled Barakat, coordinator of the Campaign to Free Ahmad Sa’adat, provided a political analysis of the current situation of the Palestinian struggle for liberation and what is needed today in order to achieve justice in Palestine.

“Those who recognize and defend Israel’s ‘right to exist’ on stolen Palestinian land cannot be true friends or part of the real solidarity movement with the Palestinian people. We must keep the flame of the struggle burning in confrontation with Israel and its supporters inside and outside Palestine, under the leadership of the Palestinian people and their resistance, and with the support of the Arab nation, the people of the region, and the progressive forces and people of the world. This is the only truly realistic and revolutionary option to change the balance of power locally and internationally and change the equation in the region to the benefit of the Palestinian people and their just struggle for liberation,” said Barakat.

He addressed the Palestinian and Arab resistance as the only mechanism capable of defeating “the settler-colonial racist state in occupied Palestine,” noting that there are nearly 100 years of Palestinian armed struggle for liberation. “Since 1917, the Palestinian people have been confronting colonialism and occupation.” He dismissed the so-called “two state solution” as a “major betrayal of the Palestinian people and their right to return to their homes from which they were forced,” calling instead for “the establishment of the democratic state of Palestine on the entire land of Palestine,” from the river to the sea.

Barakat denounced the Brazilian government’s economic and military partnerships with the Israeli state while it expresses verbal support for Palestinian rights, urging the acceleration of the campaign for the full boycott of Israel at all levels, military, economic, cultural, academic and political.

Palestinian women prisoners have been subject to abuse and mistreatment under arrest and inside Israel’s HaSharon prison, reported Palestinian lawyer Hanan al-Khatib.

Lina Khattab, the Bir Zeit University media student and El-Funoun folkloric dancer whose hearing has been postponed multiple times since her arrest on 13 December, reported that she was abused and beaten by Israeli soldiers during her detention, and one of the soldiers hit her, ripped her clothes and shouted obscene insults at her. Yasmin Shaaban also reported that when she was arrested on 3 November, she was bound for a long time to a stiff chair in stress positions and was threatened with the arrest of her family members in order to coerce a confession. She was denied the right to see a lawyer and was held in a dirty, humid interrogation cell.

Lena Jarbouni, the longest-held woman Palestinian political prisoner, noted that the women are suffering from very cold temperatures inside the prison while the administration has rejected the introduction of winter blankets and warmer clothes from prisoners’ families. Windows in the prison are covered over in leaking and torn plastic into which cold wind frequently enters and most of the prisoners are suffering from back pain and other body aches due to the ongoing and persistent cold temperatures.

Shireen Issawi, Palestinian lawyer from Jerusalem imprisoned since 6 March 2014, reported that Israeli “criminal” (as opposed to Palestinian “security”) prisoners frequently heckle the Palestinian women with support or silence from prison guards.

Denial of medical treatment and medical neglect is an ongoing problem for Palestinian political prisoners. Samaher Suleiman Othman Zein el-Deen reported that she is not receiving proper medical testing or treatment despite the discovery of breast tumors, while Amal Taqatqa complained of ongoing denials of medical care. She only received a wheelchair after her fellow prisoners complained collectively multiple times after they were forced to carry Amal in order to help her move for basic needs.

Yassin Abu Lafah, 24, a Palestinian prisoners’ rights advocate from Askar refugee camp near Nablus arrested on 12 January, was ordered to six months in Israeli administrative detention without charge or trial on 24 January.

He joined 8 more Palestinians whose orders to imprisonment without charge or trial were confirmed as renewed by the Ofer military court: Noor Dudeen, who was ordered to four months administrative detention (his initial order had been for six months); Mahmoud Sweiteh, ordered to four months administrative detention; Nidal Kamal Mar’i, ordered to two months administrative detention (his initial order had been for three months; it was noted that this would be his final detention before release); Nader Jaffal, ordered renewed for four months; Marwan Shawamreh, ordered to six months further imprisonment; Murad Shqeiqat, ordered to four months administrative detention; Abdul Rahman Hindiyeh, ordered to 2 months administrative detention (down from an original order of four); and Abdullah Musa El-Omleh, ordered to six more months imprisonment.

Dr. Imad Barghouthi, a Palestinian astrophysicist and professor at Al-Quds University who formerly worked at NASA in the United States, was released from administrative detention on 22 January. He had been arrested while travelling to an academic conference in the United Arab Emirates and ordered to three months administrative detention. Following the filing of an appeal and a campaign by scientists and physicists around the world, the order against him was lifted.

For Abu Lafah, this was his first administrative detention order after arrest; the other 8 were renewed orders. 98 administrative detention orders against Palestinians have now been issued by Israeli military courts in January. Administrative detention orders, which frequently target community leaders, are issued without charge or trial and on the basis of secret evidence – if any. They can range from one to six month periods and are indefinitely renewable; Palestinians can spend years in administrative detention, never charged or tried. 17 of these orders renewed existing administrative detention orders, while 5 were newly issued.

The systematic use of arbitrary imprisonment by Israeli forces to punish Palestinians violates international humanitarian law under the Fourth Geneva Convention. There are approximately 500 Palestinians held in administrative detention, imprisoned without charge or trial