Palestinian inmates agree to end hunger strike
[Update: Further news from the Financial Times, citing Addameer (the prisoners rights group), reported on the Egypt-brokered deal and its effect on the longer hunger strike among Palestinian prisoners:
":Sahar Francis, director of Addameer, said the agreement appeared to be favourable for Palestinian inmates. “It’s good – as far as the prisoners’ main demands, this appears to be enough,” she said.
It was not clear what impact the accord would have on a separate hunger strike by several prisoners against Israel’s policy of detaining Palestinians without charge for months or even years.
The Israeli activist organisation Physicians for Human Rights-Israel said on Monday that at least seven administrative detainees were on weeks-long hunger strikes. Most have been refusing food for at least 40 days. The group also said two had been refusing food for more than 70 days and were “in imminent risk of death”.
According to Israeli human rights activists, international law says countries should use administrative detentions only in exceptional cases but Israel implements it as a “blanket measure” against Palestinians....
The agreement did not make any mention of administrative detentions." (See the Financial Times and Addameer for more information. --Frontlines ed.]
by Nidal al-Mughrabi | Reuters | May 14, 2012
A Palestinian artist paints a mural in Gaza City in support of Palestinian prisoners on a hunger strike in Israeli jails May 14, 2012. REUTERS/Suhaib Salem
Palestinian women look at a man standing inside a mock prison cell during a rally in the West Bank city of Ramallah, May 14, 2012, in support of Palestinian prisoners on a hunger strike in Israeli jails. REUTERS/Mohamad Torokman
GAZA (Reuters) – Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails agreed on Monday to an Egyptian-brokered deal aimed at ending a mass hunger strike that challenged Israel’s policy of detention without trial and raised fears of a bloody Palestinian backlash if any protesters died.
Most of some 1,600 prisoners, a third of the 4,800 Palestinians in Israeli jails, began refusing food on April 17 although a few had been fasting much longer – up to 77 days.
Their protest centered on demands for more family visits, an end to solitary confinement and an easing of so-called “administrative detention”, a practice that has drawn international criticism on human rights grounds.
An Egyptian official involved in the talks said that under Monday’s deal to end the strike, Israel had agreed to end solitary confinement for 19 prisoners and lifted a ban on visits to prisoners by relatives living in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip.
Israel also agreed to improve other conditions of detention, and to free so-called administrative detainees once they complete their terms unless they are brought to court, according to the official.
Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri confirmed the deal, telling Reuters that “the prisoners signed the deal after their demands were met. The deal was brokered by Egypt.”
Israel also confirmed an accord had been struck. “An agreement has been signed to bring about the end of a 28-day hunger strike by Palestinian security prisoners,” the Israel Prisons Authority said in a written statement. Read more »
Palestinian hunger strikers ‘in immiment danger’
May 10, 2012 by AlJazeeraEnglish
At least six of the 2,000 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails are in imminent danger of dying, according to their lawyers.
Al Jazeera’s Cal Perry reports from Ramallah, West Bank.
Palestine: Political prisoners’ hunger strike reaches critical stage
Detained PFLP Leader Moved To Prison Hospital
Sunday April 29, 2012 15:03, by Saed Bannoura – IMEMC News
Palestinian sources reported, Sunday, that detained secretary-general of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), Ahmad Sa’adat, was moved to the Ramla prison hospital after a sharp deterioration in his health condition.
Sa’adat had been on hunger-strike since thirteen days joining the open-ended hunger-strike declared by the Palestinian political prisoners held in various Israeli prisons and detention center.
The PFLP leader has been in solitary confinement for three years now, with no end in sight; his health condition is gradually deteriorating due to various health conditions that need specialized medical attention.
Palestinian Minister of Detainee, Issa Qaraqe’, stated that the Ministry’s attorney, Rami Al-Alami, went to visit Sa’adat on Sunday but the Israeli Prison Administration told him that Sa’adat was moved to the Ramla Prison hospital.
The Quds Net News Agency reported that detainees of the PFLP rejected an Israeli offer to end their hunger-strike in exchange for removing Sa’adat from solitary confinement, and stated that Israel must stop all of its violations, and put an end to its illegal solitary confinement policies.
All hunger-striking detainees are demanding Israel to treatment in accordance with International Law, and insist on an end to all policies of solitary confinement, and all sorts of attacks and violations against them and their visiting family members.
Detainee Bilal Thiab entered his sixty-second day of ongoing hunger-strike demanding to be released. Several hunger-striking detainees were moved to hospital but refused to break their strike.
Detainee Tha’er Halahla entered his 61 day of hunger-strike at the Ramla Prison Hospital; prison doctors warned Thursday that his body is losing its immune system and his organs might be failing. Read more »
58 Days On Hunger-Strike, Ailing Palestinian Detainee Determined To Continue
by Saed Bannoura
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Occupy for Prisoners National Day of Action: Next Steps!
Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity, February 2012
Dear Friends,
Occupy San Quentin demonstration on February 20, 2012
As you know on February 20th, over a dozen rallies and demonstrations were held throughout the US for a “National Occupy Day in Support of Prisoners,” including in the San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles, Austin, Denver, Baltimore, Philadelphia and New York.
At Occupy San Quentin in California, despite the prison administration’s attempts to close off access to the protest, over 700 people gathered at the prison’s East Gate to hear statements from prisoners and family and community members of prisoners, former prisoners, and people directly affected by the prison industrial complex speak out against the destructive impacts of imprisonment.
Many prisoners sent words of encouragement and vision to be read at the actions. Prisoners in Ohio State Prison went on hunger strike in solidarity with the national day in support of prisoners. Prisoners in the Security Housing Unit at Corcoran State Prison wrote a statement of solidarity and have raised 10 demands for the Occupy Movement. The N.C.T.T (NARN Collective Think Tank) at Corcoran SHU, a group of prisoners who participated in the CA hunger strike in the summer and fall and have been writing reports and statements about prisoners’ struggles inside, writes:
You champion us all with your ideas and the courage of your convictions, just as we continue to support you with our sacrifices and insight. It is now time to take the movement to its next evolution and ultimately to its inevitable conclusion: victorious revolutionary change.
Some of the San Quentin 6, formerly incarcerated San Quentin prisoners--friends and comrades of George Jackson, who had been accused of rebellion when he was murdered by prison guards in 1971--spoke to the demonstration on 2/20/12.
Your greatest power lies in your unity and cooperation and ultimately your organizational ability. The power of the people far surpasses all the repressive violence of the Babylons attacking you/us or the wealth of the 1 percent, who will stop at nothing to silence us all.
This is a protracted struggle; there will be no 90-day revolution here. Victory will require sacrifice, tenacity and competent strategic insight. The question you must ask is, Are you prepared to do what is necessary to win this struggle? If you answer in the affirmative, commit to victory and accept no other alternative. The people, as we are, are with you. Until we win or don’t lose, our love and solidarity to all those who love freedom and fear only failures.
Read the full letter, including ten demands for the Occupy Movement from the NCTT at Corcoran SHU here.
Let’s make these words come alive and show active support for prisoners!
TAKE ACTION TODAY !
150,000 Calls in Support of Prisoners
Support the CA Hunger Strike & Call, Email & Write CA Legislators TODAY!
Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity is calling for hunger strike supporters to jam the CA legislature’s communication with overwhelming support for the hunger strike.
Visit our blog for sample phone & email scripts, as well as an open letter you can send in or fax, and flyers to pass out at Occupy’s National Day in Support of Prisoners and other events. Read more »
Guantánamo Prisoners Stage Peaceful Protest and Hunger Strike on 10th Anniversary of the Opening of the Prison
10.1.12
by Andy Worthington
Today, prisoners at Guantánamo will embark on a peaceful protest, involving sit-ins and hunger strikes, to protest about their continued detention, and the continued existence of the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, three years after President Obama came to office promising to close it within a year, and to show their appreciation of the protests being mounted on their behalf by US citizens, who are gathering in Washington D.C. on Wednesday to stage a rally and march to urge the President to fulfill his broken promise.
Ramzi Kassem, a law professor at the City University of New York, and one of the attorneys for Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in Guantánamo, said that his client, who is held in isolation in Camp 5, told him on his last visit that the prisoners would embark on a peaceful protest and hunger strike for three days, from Jan. 10 to 12, to protest about the President’s failure to close Guantánamo as promised.
He explained that the men intended to inform the Officer in Charge ahead of the protest, to let the authorities know why there would be protests, and added that the prisoners were encouraged by the “expression of solidarity” from US citizens planning protests on Jan. 11, the 10th anniversary of the opening of the prison.
Kassem also said that another of his clients, in Camp 6, where most of the prisoners are held, and where, unlike Camp 5, they are allowed to socialize, stated that prisoners throughout the blocks were “extremely encouraged” by reports of the protests in Washington D.C.
The prisoner, who does not wish to be identified, also said that banners and signs had been prepared, and that there would be peaceful sit-ins in the communal areas. He added that the prisoners were concerned to let the outside world know that they still reject the injustice of their imprisonment, and feel that it is particularly important to let everyone know this, when the US government, under President Obama, is trying to persuade the world that “everything is OK” at Guantánamo, and that the prison is a humane, state of the art facility. Read more »
Philippines: Political prisoners stage different forms of protest
December 7, 2011
By INA ALLECO R. SILVERIO, Bulatlat.com
Detained artist Ericson Acosta and other political detainees all over the country are on hunger strike.
They began their strike last Saturday, December 3, 2011, as part of the campaign to free all political prisoners in the country. The hunger strike and sympathy fasts would continue until December 8. Other forms of protests are also being held in Camp Bagong Diwa and Batangas Provincial Jail.
Acosta, in particular, began his hunger strike to expose the particular circumstances of his arrest and continued unjust detention.
Acosta is an artist, journalist and cultural worker who was arrested by members of the Armed Forces of the Philippines on February 13, 2011 in Barangay Bay-ang, San Jorge, Samar province in the Eastern Visayan region. He faces trumped-up charges of illegal possession of explosives and is currently detained at the Calbayog City sub-provincial jail.
The UP activist’s counsel has filed a Petition for Review of his case before the Philippine government’s Department of Justice (DOJ) last September 1.Acosta’s supporters have called on authorities, particularly the Department of Justice , to immediately withdraw the fabricated illegal possession of explosive complaint lodged by the military against the poet. In a written message, Acosta stressed that it was “ utterly baseless for him to undergo a full-blown trial for this trumped-up charge.”
“I am the one who has the right to charge the state elements responsible for violating my human rights,” he said.
One of his particular demands is to pull out the highly irregular if not illegal presence of a squad of military men near his place of detention. A platoon of soldiers from the 87th IB were first deployed in the nearby barrio since July in the pretext of military operations, but it has become apparent that the soldiers are there to “guard” Acosta. Read more »
California: Three Prisoners Die in Hunger Strike Related Incidents
November 17, 2011 — CDCR Withholds Information from Family Members, Fails to Report Deaths
Press Contact: Isaac Ontiveros, Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity, http://prisonerhungerstrikesolidarity.wordpress.com/
Oakland – In the month since the second phase of a massive prisoner hunger strike in California ended on September 22nd, three prisoners who had been on strike have committed suicide. Johnny Owens Vick and another prisoner were both confined in the Pelican Bay Security Housing Unit and Hozel Alanzo Blanchard was confined in the Calipatria Administrative Segregation Unit (ASU). According to reports from prisoners who were housed in surrounding cells and who witnessed the deaths, guards did not come to the assistance of one of the prisoners at Pelican Bay or to Blanchard, and in the case of the Pelican Bay prisoner (whose name is being withheld for the moment) apparently guards deliberately ignored his cries for help for several hours before finally going to his cell, at which point he was already dead. “It is completely despicable that prison officials would willfully allow someone to take their own life,” said Dorsey Nunn, Executive Director of Legal Services for Prisoners with Children, “These guys were calling for help, their fellow prisoners were calling for help, and guards literally stood by and watched it happen.”
Family members of the deceased as well as advocates are having difficult time getting information about the three men and the circumstances of their deaths. The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) is required to do an autopsy is the cases of suspicious deaths and according to the Plata case, is required to do an annual report on every death in the system. Family members have said that their loved ones, as well as many other prisoners who participated in the hunger strike, were being severely retaliated against with disciplinary actions and threats. Blanchard’s family has said that he felt that his life was threatened and had two emergency appeals pending with the California Supreme Court at the time of his death. “It is a testament to the dire conditions under which prisoners live in solitary confinement that three people would commit suicide in the last month,” said Laura Magnani, Regional Director of the American Friends Service Committee, “It also points to the severe toll that the hunger strike has taken on these men, despite some apparent victories.” Prisoners in California’s SHUs and other forms of solitary confinement have a much higher rate of suicide than those in general population.
The hunger strike, which at one time involved the participation of at least 12,000 prisoners in 13 state prisons was organized around five core demands relating to ending the practices of group punishment, long-term solitarily confinement, and gang validation and debriefing. The CDCR has promised changes to the gang validation as soon as early next year and were due to have a draft of the new for review this November, although it’s not known whether that process is on schedule. “If the public and legislators don’t continue to push CDCR, they could easily sweep all of this under the rug,” said Emily Harris, statewide coordinator Californians United for a Responsible Budget, “These deaths are evidence that the idea of accountability is completely lost on California’s prison officials.”
India’s Prisons are Schools of Resistance and Revolution
CPI (Maoist) leaders start movements in jails
Hindustan Times
Kolkata, October 13, 2011
Kolkata, October 13, 2011
CPI (Maoist) has opened a new front, from behind the bars, away from Junglemahal. With senior leaders lodged in jails, the party is not only spreading its views among the inmates, but also leading movements and agitations on various issues. Since the past couple of years, a number of agitations have taken place inside the jails, including the central jails, where a large number of inmates even sat on indefinite hunger strikes.According to jail sources, Maoists have formed various jail committees, which not only look after rights of prisoners, but also make them aware of the current political situation. Intelligence sources admit that Maoists have also initiated indoctrination classes for young under trials in some jails.”It is their strategy to catch the administration on the wrong foot. They have been organising inmates behind the bars and prompting agitations. They are the brain behind most agitations, however frivolous for a cause it may be,” said Ranvir Kumar, inspector general of jails. Read more »Why prisons and prisoners must matter to the Occupy movement
[The following, from an article by Michael Novick, addressed to the Occupy Wall Street movement and Occupy LA, draws connections between the California prison movement's struggle for human rights and the Occupy movement. -- Frontlines ed.]
by Michael Novick, Anti-Racist Action-LA
Prisons and the millions who are imprisoned are a critical issue in this society for the 1 percent and for the 99 percent. They must be a vital area of concern for the Occupy Wall Street movement and especially here in Occupy LA. Here’s why:
Social control
Dostoyevsky said that you can best understand a society by looking inside its prisons. The U.S. has the highest incarceration rate in the world. We have 5 percent of the global population and 25 percent of all the prisoners.
Prisons expose the brutal violence at the base of social control, the iron fist hidden by the velvet glove of elections and by the weapons of mass distraction. After the mass rebellions of the ‘60s and ‘70s, the 1 percent made a conscious decision to de-industrialize the U.S. and drive poor people from the inner city to the outskirts of the cities, as in Latin America and Africa, or into the concentration camps.
Prison populations shot up from under 200,000 to over 2,600,000 and still rising. Millions more are in and out of jail or under custodial control by the parole and probation systems. This has resulted in painful and massive destabilization of communities, especially communities of color, and affected millions more in families disrupted by having members imprisoned and moved far away. Read more »
California: Some inmates continue prison hunger strike, advocates say
By Mary Slosson
LOS ANGELES | Fri Oct 14, 2011
(Reuters) – A day after California prison officials declared a 3-week-old hunger strike by thousands of convicts over, an inmate advocacy group said on Friday that at least 150 prisoners were still refusing to eat.
The protest began at Pelican Bay State Prison in Northern California and spread to at least 4,000 inmates in seven other facilities at its height late last month, with prisoners demanding an end to what they called inhumane treatment.
Many of the grievances focused on the prison system’s use of solitary confinement to enforce discipline and for what inmates say is a means of coercing them to “rat out” prison gang members.
The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation announced on Thursday the hunger strike had ended after prison officials agreed to review procedures by which certain convicts are classified as too dangerous for the general inmate population.
But inmate representatives later said that as of Friday 150 convicts were continuing their protest at two prisons because conditions in which they are held remained unaddressed.
“We know that there are people still going at Calipatria (State Prison) and Salinas Valley (State Prison),” said Isaac Ontiveros, a spokesman for the Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity Coalition. “They have been clear that they are willing to keep going at great peril to their own health.” Read more »
Prisoners from Corcoran State Prison-SHU respond to prison official’s lies
[A careful and detailed rebuttal of the state prison officials justifications for the tortuous conditions prisoners in the Security Housing Units are subjected to -- and severe repression of California prison hunger strikers. This article is well-worth reading, and passing along. -- Frontlines ed.]
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A Brief Discussion on the Reality and Impact of SHU Torture Units in the Wake of the August 23rd Legislative Hearings, From the N.C.T.T. – COR-SHU
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere…We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.” — Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Letter from Birmingham Jail, 4/16/63
These sage words by Dr. King are both appropriate to the discussion we’d like to have with you on indefinite SHU confinement, and cautionary as to who we are as a society in these troubled times. This 2nd point is very relevant to this discussion and we hope you’ll stick with us as we explore subject matter that is both broad and disturbing which requires us to share some inconvenient truths.
Security Housing Units, SHUs, like those in Pelican Bay, Tehachapi, and this one here in Corcoran are torture units. They are used to indefinitely house human beings in solitary confinement, under constant illumination, based on an administrative determination that they are “gang” members or associates, with an impetus towards breaking their minds in hopes of eliciting information, coercing them into becoming informants or active agents of the state. The torture units are the living tombs of not only alleged “gang” members or associates, but political and politicized prisoners, human rights activists, critics of the prison industry, jailhouse lawyers and most anyone who in the sole determination of Institutional Gang Investigators (I.G.I.) and administrators, are not content to accept and submit passively to their role as commodities in the prison industrial complex. The United States, and many of it’s media outlets such as the ‘New York Times’ and ‘San Diego Union Tribune’, prior to the U.S. “War on Terror” routinely criticized China, Turkey, Burma, Syria, and other nations for holding prisoners in indefinite solitary confinement, under conditions of constant illumination and/or sensory deprivation, etc. for expressing contrary political views. They universally condemned the practice as torture, citing the United Nations Human Rights Commission Treaty. Their hypocrisy was of course revealed soon after the policy of U.S. sponsored torture at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, and numerous secret C.I.A. blacksite prisons was exposed. Yet America’s dirty little secret is, state sponsored torture in the U.S. is neither new or exclusive to it’s “War on Terror”. Years before Abu Ghraib and ‘Gitmo’ they were murdering prisoners in San Quentin’s Adjustment Center, boiling men alive at Pelican Bay-SHU, and holding murderous bloodsport style bouts in Corcoran-SHU all along holding alleged “gang” members and left wing political ideologues for decades in sensory deprivation torture units at Pelican Bay, Corcoran, and Tehachapi SHUs. Yes, indefinite solitary confinement and constant illumination is being used right now in California SHU units, in conjunction with a program of systematic isolation and experimental behavior modification to torture prisoners everyday … with no end in sight. Read more »
Support grows for Palestinian’s prison strike
| 10 Oct 2011 |
Activists start open-ended hunger strike in support of prisoners in Israel fasting against “worsening jail conditions”. |
| At least 60 activists in the occupied West Bank, Gaza and Israel have started an open-ended hunger strike in support of Palestinians already fasting in Israeli jails against allegedly worsening conditions.A solidarity camp by youth was launched in the Israeli city of Haifa on Sunday in a “spontaneous response” to the detainees’ strike that was declared two weeks ago, organisers said.
“We mainly have two reasons: to support the prisoners and raise their morale [in continuing their hunger strike] and to raise awareness of the Palestinian political detainees,” Muhannad Abu-Gosh, an organiser of the Haifa camp, told Al Jazeera. Some 50 Palestinian political prisoners began a ongoing hunger strike on September 27. Other prisoners have since joined in. As of Sunday, 234 inmates were fasting, Sivan Weizman, the spokeswoman for the Israeli Prison Service, said in a statement. Read more » |
Palestine: Five Wounded, Four Arrested in West Bank Protests in Solidarity with Hunger-Striking Prisoners
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PNN
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| October 8, 2011 | |
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Weekly protests erupted around the West Bank on Friday, resulting in two injuries and the arrests of at least three Palestinians and one German solidarity activist. Demonstrations were held in solidarity with Palestinian political prisoners entering their eleventh day of hunger strikes in Israeli prisons.
 In the southern West Bank village of al-Walajeh, a few kilometers west of Bethlehem, Israeli soldiers shot tear gas canisters to suppress a demonstration of about 50 people, mostly youths. Hosam Odah, Mohammed al-Jawarish, and Hamzah Sarasreh, ages unknown, were arrested as well as German solidarity activist Amr Mohammed.In nearby al-Ma’sara village, two Palestinians named Mahmoud Ala’adin and Mahmoud Zawahireh were injured when Israeli soldiers suppressed a protest. Their injuries were described as “moderate.”
In the central West Bank village of Bil’in, popular committee media coordinator Ratib Abu Rahma said that the Israeli army shot tear gas canisters, sound bombs, and rubber bullets at demonstrating Palestinians. He explained that dozens of Palestinians suffered from “severe tear gas inhalation,” including Palestine TV cameraman Ali Dar Ali and photographer Mohammed Radi.
Violent clashes were also reported in the central West Bank village of al-Nabi Saleh, where three Palestinians were hit by Israeli tear gas canisters. Reporters claimed that in violation of Israeli army open-fire regulations, soldiers fired the canisters directly at protestors instead of over their heads.
Palestinian prisoners in Israeli military prisons have been refusing to eat since September 27 in protest of worsening prison conditions. The strike includes at least 500 people as of Friday, about 7% of the 7,500 total prisoners. It was called after Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu authorized a tightening of prison restrictions designed to force the release of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, held by Hamas in Gaza since 2006.
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