Ref: 56/2014
Date: 25 May 2014
Time: 10:00 GMT
The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) is concerned over the lives of administrative detainees, who started a hunger strike around a month ago, and holds Israel fully responsible for the deterioration of their conditions. PCHR calls upon the international community to exercise pressure over the Israeli authorities to immediately release these detainees and stop the policy of administrative detention without a charge or a fail trial.
More than 90 administrative detainees has been on an open hunger strike in the Israeli prison since 24 April 2014, calling for ending administrative detention against them. Meanwhile, dozens of prisoners joined the strike in solidarity with the administrative detainees. According to the upward steps declared by the convicted prisoner in solidarity with the hunger strikers, around 80 prisoners will join the hunger strike today. Although the strike has entered its second month and has expanded to include larger numbers, the Israeli prison authorities refused to listen to the detainees’ demands and imposed punitive measures against them, including transferring the administrative detainees on hunger strike to solitary confinement, beating them, depriving them of necessary health care despite the deterioration of the health conditions of some of them, and not allowing them to take the recess.
The Israeli government plans to enact more legislations that would impose more restrictions on Palestinian prisoners and violate their rights, which are guaranteed under all international instruments and mechanisms. The most recent legislation was the approval of a bill to force-feed Palestinian prisoners on hunger strike as a prelude to submit it before the Israeli Knesset, under the pretext of protecting the lives of the prisoners.
On the other hand, the administrative detainees refused to end their hunger strike and recently took escalatory steps as they have stopped taking their vitamins and supplements for 10 days. Moreover, the detainees threatened to abstain from drinking water in case the Israeli prison service refused to listen to their demands. Legal and media sources reported that health conditions of some hunger strikers are deteriorating as they entered their second month of hunger strike in addition to being deprived of necessary medical care by the Israeli prison. The detainees are being held in dirty and unhealthy cells, where insects spread over.
It should be noted that according to an agreement with the Palestinian prisoners, who organized a hunger strike in May 2012, Israeli authorities undertook to, inter alia, end the administrative detention provided that detainees end their 28-day strike. PCHR welcomed
the agreement then and hoped that Israeli authorities would comply with it. However, Israeli authorities have continued to apply administrative detention over the past period.
It is worth saying that about 200 Palestinian administrative detainees, including 9 members of the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC), are detained in Israeli detention facilities in violation of the right to a fair trial, including the right to receive an appropriate defense and to be informed of the charges against them. Administrative detention is applied by an administrative order only, without referring to a court, thus violating the standards of impartial judicial procedures, including fair trial. Moreover, Israeli authorities renew their detention periods leaving many administrative detainees in jail for years.
In view of the above:
