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LOCAL Commentary :: Civil & Human Rights

Addameer Speaking Tour - Report & Photos

Report on the Chicago leg of the Addameer Speaking Tour to Support Palestinian Political Prisoners:

By Bill Chambers
Palestine Solidarity Group - Chicago
Sahar Francis at Cafe Batey Urbano.bmp
Akram Al Ayasa at Cafe Batey Urbano.bmp
Audience members a Cafe Batey Urbano.bmp
Sumoud (sumoud.tao.ca/), a political prisoner solidarity group in Toronto, sponsored a North American speaking tour of Palestinian ex-political prisoners and activists from Occupied Palestine in eight cities in the US and Canada, making its Chicago stop on April 9-11. The tour participants were from Addameer (www.addameer.org), a Palestinian prisoners’ support and human rights association in Ramallah. The Addameer representatives were Sahar Francis, a Palestinian lawyer who has worked for many years with Palestinian prisoners, and Akram Al Ayasa, an ex-political prisoner and former president of the Bethlehem University Student Council, who had been arrested seven times from 1976-1990 by the Israeli occupation forces for organizing student movement activities and civil demonstrations against the occupation.

The Chicago leg of the tour was sponsored by a broad spectrum of organizations that illustrates the support that the political prisoner campaign has generated in its early launch. These included the Palestine Solidarity Group, the Arab American Action Network, the National Boricua Human Rights Network, the First United Methodist Church of Downers Grove, the Coalition of African, Asian, European, and Latino Immigrants of Illinois, the International Solidarity Movement-Chicago Chapter, and Not In My Name. At each of the events—a meeting with members of the National Lawyers Guild, an Arabic-language presentation to Chicago’s southwest side Arab American community at the Arab Community Center, an appearance with church-based activists at the First United Methodist Church in Downers Grove, and finally, an inspired discussion with the Puerto Rican community at the Café Batey Urbano in Humbolt Park—Francis and Al Ayasa were able to promote the message of raising awareness and solidarity around the issue of Palestinian political prisoners inside Israeli occupation jails and to connect this struggle to the struggles against the oppression of political prisoners throughout the world.

The National Lawyers Guild heard Al Ayasa speak of being arrested multiple times for non-militant, student demonstrations as the Palestinians’ rights to protest the injustice of the occupation was ignored; mass arrests and detentions that happened even before the first Intifada; an Israeli “defense force” that arrested him the first time for protesting the killing of two Palestinian girls by settlers driving by the school; the administrative detention that came with the first Intifada, as the large numbers of Palestinians who had come out to protest the occupation could only be detained by arrest without evidence and without trial; and his final arrest and detention at a military camp/prison far into the desert near Egypt, where family visits were not allowed and visits by lawyers were difficult if not impossible.

Francis discussed the difficulties of practicing law under a contradictory and vindictive system that treats Palestinians as common criminals, but under a military court. Lawyers have difficulty even visiting clients, sometimes having to wait as long as six months for a visit, or a year to get a court date. Especially during this most recent Intifada, which started in September of 2000, lawyers were increasingly targeted for harassment, some even accused of passing information about the resistance to their clients (even though they were separated by a glass wall during visits). During the Palestinian prisoners’ hunger strike in August of 2004, lawyers were accused of passing information, and helping to coordinate, between clients in different prisons, because the Israeli prison authorities could not comprehend how the hunger strike, a protest against prison conditions and violations of human rights and international law, had so quickly and organically spread throughout all the prisons in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and 1948 Palestine.

At the Arab Community Center and the First United Methodist Church in Downers Grove, a film produced by Defense of Children International-Palestine Section (www.dci-pal.org/english/info/aboutus.cfm), a Ramallah-based children’s support group, provided vivid case studies of Fida, arrested at 15 and kept in jail for two years, followed by 18 months of probation, who was beaten in jail as she resisted her jailors’ demands to change her name (it means “sacrifice for the homeland”); and Rakan, arrested at 17, joking with his parents after his release because “he smells like cigarettes,” and in the next breath, talking about the beatings and torture that prompted two suicide attempts. Francis explained that the UN and international conventions define a juvenile as being under the age of 18, while Israel defines a juvenile as anyone under 16—allowing them to detain and jail many more Palestinian youth. She made it very clear that in terms of prison conditions, treatment, and torture, the Israeli prison authorities draw no distinctions between adults and juveniles.

At Café Batey Urbano, both Francis and Al Ayasa were inspired by the stories of Carlos Alberto Torres and Oscar Lopez Rivera, Puerto Rican political prisoners who have been unjustly imprisoned in the US for 25 years. Al Ayasa spoke of the impact prison life has on the whole family, describing his own son calling him “uncle,” not being able to reconcile the photo of his father in prison with the man who had come home to him; as well as the economic difficulties that are caused by the imprisonment of the eldest son or the breadwinner in a family. And hearing about the Puerto Rican prisoners helped Al Ayasa recall some of his comrades, who are still in jail 20 years after his first arrest.

To an audience of Palestinian, Puerto Rican, Irish Republican, American Jewish, anti-war, and anti-racist activists, Francis appealed for solidarity with the movement to free Palestinian political prisoners, and all prisoners who resist occupation and colonialism. Putting this appeal into action after the presentation, the whole audience went across the street to visit the prison art exhibit of Rivera and Torres, commemorating the 25th year of their incarceration.

After leaving Chicago, the two continued to San Francisco and the Al-Awda (Right of Return) Convention in Los Angeles; and concluded the tour last week in Toronto and Montreal. The impressive turnout at their events in Chicago demonstrated that a broad section of people from many Chicago communities oppose the occupation of Palestine, and the denial of human rights and political status to those who would resist.
The Sumoud and Addameer tour is only the beginning of an international campaign to free all Palestinian political prisoners. By the time this article is published, there will have been demonstrations around the world outside of the offices of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), commemorating Palestinian Prisoners’ Day on April 17th—to demand that the ICRC, the only organization allowed access to Israeli prisons, take effective and public action to end the practice of Israel’s incarceration of Palestinian prisoners in areas outside of the occupied territories, to end Israel’s widespread use of torture on Palestinian detainees, to ensure that sick and injured prisoners are provided adequate and appropriate medical treatment, and to end all violations of the prisoners’ rights.

For more information on what you can do to be a part of the campaign to free all Palestinian political prisoners, contact the Palestine Solidarity Group (www.psgchicago.org) at info (at) psgchicago.org.
 
 

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