Ramallah- 6/8/2015- Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association, Al-Mizan Center for Human Rights and Aldameer Association for Human Rights demand the Israeli Prison Service (IPS) to immediately end the systematic attacks and ill-treatment practiced against Palestinian prisoners and detainees. The organizations have further expressed their utmost support and solidarity with the Palestinian prisoners and detainees and their legitimate demands. These continuous and systematic attacks on Palestinian prisoners are part of the collective punishment measures practiced on  Palestinians in the Israeli occupation prisons. 

The organizations further condemn the recent punitive measures imposed on Palestinian prisoners during the last war on Gaza by Israeli occupation authorities and the recent legislations and discriminatory laws that have been drafted and passed. Israel has recently approved several legislations aimed against Palestinian prisoners that violate international humanitarian law and human rights standards the latest of which was the notorious force-feeding bill.

According to Addameer’s documentation and research unit, Palestinian prisoners held in Nafha, Remon, Negev and Eshel prisons are starting a disobedience campaign against the IPS administration which is expected to last for 20 days and could possibly end in an open hunger strike. 

documentation and research unit  further added that prisoners at Remon prison started have taking several escalatory steps including returning meals as of Thursday’s afternoon (today) and severing ties between prisoner’s representatives and the administration as of Friday. 

Prisoners in Nafha Prison demanded putting an end to the humiliating searches; returning prisoners to the prison sections they were held in before the recent raids; ending the punitive measures that were imposed on prisoners following these raids which included isolation, denial of visitation rights and fines; and to remove the family-visit ban imposed on the Secretary-General of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), Mr. Ahmad Saadat.  

Palestinian prisoners and detainees in the southern prisons started these escalatory measures after the IPS special units conducted a large scale campaign of the raids especially in Nafha prison, where some of the prisoners were injured and others were isolated, in addition to regular arbitrary transfers against them.  

Addameer’s statistics indicate a noticeable increase in the number of raids implemented by the IPS’s special units; in 2010 the IPS conducted over 120 raids and this figure has increased gradually to reach more than 180 raids in 2014.