International Day of Political Prisoners: Freedom for Palestinian political prisoners!
The people of Gaza are experiencing an ongoing genocide. At the same time, the State of Israel uses other means to implement and accelerate colonization, ethnic cleansing in the occupied West Bank including East Jerusalem.
For too many years, the Palestinian population has suffered mass arrests, military tribunals, arbitrary detentions, torture, undignified treatment, lack of care which can lead to death.
It's even worse since October 7. In 6 months, more than 7,000 arrests including 500 minors, more than 4,400 administrative detention orders issued by Israeli military courts.
Administrative detention, renewable at will, makes it possible to imprison a man, a woman, or a minor without trial, without any charges or evidence being communicated to the lawyer. Re-arrests are systemic. And it is not possible, to date, to know the number of people arrested in Gaza and who have disappeared.
Since October 7, 15 prisoners from the West Bank and East Jerusalem and 27 from Gaza died in detention following torture and lack of treatment.
As of April 4, more than 9,400 Palestinians are imprisoned by Israel, including 200 minors and 3,661 placed in administrative detention.
The testimonies of prisoners collected after their release describe the unspeakable: very violent arrests, torture and sexual violence inflicted during interrogations, in the cells, permanent humiliation, food in miserable quantities which animals would not want, organized prison overcrowding, a total absence of hygiene, care.
These men, these women, these children must endure degrading conditions of detention which deprive them of all humanity. Visits are prohibited.
The Palestinian people face state vengeance.
What prisoners undergo, from arrest to release from detention, is a tool of repression, harassment, and maintenance of permanent insecurity in the service of the Israeli apartheid regime. It is used by Israel to break the Palestinian people, to dehumanize them and continue colonization, ethnic cleansing in the occupied West Bank and the ongoing genocide in Gaza.
As if this were not enough, the State of Israel adds collective punishments inflicted on the families of prisoners: house demolition, retention of bodies after the death of the prisoner.
These conditions of arrest, interrogation, detention, collective punishments violate international humanitarian law (law of war)
The Palestinian people remain standing, resist, we remain at their side.
On this April 17, International Day of Solidarity with Palestinian Political Prisoners, the AFPS denounces the permanent and institutionalized violation of international law by the State of Israel and provides its full support to the struggle of the Palestinian people for respect for their rights.
The AFPS demands that France take the necessary measures to put pressure on the State of Israel? so that he stops this illegal and unworthy policy of repression against the Palestinian people. She must demand the release of all Palestinian political prisoners.
The National Office of the AFPS,
April 17, 2024
