[News] Palestine - In the first quarter of 2006 alone, some 350 children were arrested
Anti-Imperialist News
news at freedomarchives.org
Tue Apr 25 08:47:48 EDT 2006
Web link
<http://www.dci-pal.org/english/display.cfm?DocId=484&CategoryId=1>http://www.dci-pal.org/english/display.cfm?DocId=484&CategoryId=1
----------
It is a sad irony that Palestinian Prisoners Day
- 17 April - comes this year as massive numbers
of Palestinian children are being arrested and
detained by Israeli forces. In the first quarter
of 2006 alone, some 350 children were arrested –
compared to around 700 child arrests in the whole
of 2005. The vast increase in arrests is in turn
leading to overcrowding in prisons as record
numbers of juveniles are being held in unsuitable and unhygienic conditions.
Since the beginning of this Intifada in September
2000, Israeli forces have arrested around 4,000
Palestinian children, 400 of whom are still in
Israeli prisons and detention centers. The
process of arrest and detention of Palestinian
children is a process of systematic abuse and
mistreatment which flouts international legal
standards and denies the basic human rights of
detainees first as children and secondly as prisoners.
In affidavits and interviews with DCI/PS lawyers,
children have told how they are handcuffed and
blindfolded, humiliated and threatened and often
beaten and kicked from the moment they are
arrested up to and often throughout their
interrogation and detention. They are deprived of
sleep, food and access to the bathroom until
so-called confessions are coerced out of them and
only then are most children allowed to see their
lawyer. Such interrogation is aimed at extracting
quick confessions from children to prosecute them
and others before military courts, which
themselves strive to provide a legal veneer to
the illegitimate practices of the Israeli military.
Even after sentencing, the pattern of violence
and abuse does not stop. While it is a widely
recognized principle that the deprivation of
liberty is itself the penalty for perpetrating
certain offences, Israel continues to actively
punish Palestinian children during their
incarceration. The punishments imposed are
disproportionate to the alleged offences and seem
intended not to reform or rehabilitate prisoners,
but to humiliate and intimidate the children and,
on as broader level, break the spirit and
resistance of the Palestinian community.
Ultimately these Israeli practices against child
prisoners contravene a vast array of human rights
instruments including those to which Israel is a
state party, such as the
<http://www.ohchr.org/english/law/cat.htm>UN
Convention Against Torture and the
<http://www.crin.org/resources/../../../docs/resources/treaties/uncrc.asp>UN
Convention on the Rights of the Child, article 37
of which requires states parties to ensure that:
(a) No child shall be subjected to torture or
other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or
punishment. Neither capital punishment nor life
imprisonment without possibility of release shall
be imposed for offences committed by persons below eighteen years of age;
(b) No child shall be deprived of his or her
liberty unlawfully or arbitrarily. The arrest,
detention or imprisonment of a child shall be in
conformity with the law and shall be used only as
a measure of last resort and for the shortest appropriate period of time;
Given the maltreatment of Palestinian child
detainees, the institutionalized discrimination
against them, and the absence of appropriate
legal guarantees, Defence for Children
International/Palestine Section urges the UN, the
Secretary General and all the UN bodies, the
International Committee of the Red Cross and the
High Contracting parties to the
<http://www.globalissuesgroup.com/geneva/convention4.html>IV
Geneva Convention to insist that the Israeli
government respects and abides by its commitments
and obligations under international humanitarian and human rights law.
On the occasion of Palestinian Prisoners' Day,
DCI/PS also asks all parties to prioritize the
issue of child prisoners and put their immediate
and unconditional release at the top of the
agenda of any future discussions and to insist
that Israeli occupation forces cease at once
further arrests of Palestinian juveniles in the
Occupied Palestinian Territories.
More information
* Defence for Children International –
Palestin Section,
<http://www.dci-pal.org/english/camp/freedom/doclist.cfm?docid=0&categoryid=13>Factsheet
Series on Palestinian Child Political Prisoners:
Palestinian Children Tell their Own Stories (August 2001)
* Save the Children Sweden:
<http://www.crin.org/resources/../../../resources/infoDetail.asp?ID=4049&flag=report>One
Day in Prison Feels Like a Year: Palestinian
Children Tell their Own Stories (2003)
* Tyrer Bex:
<http://www.crin.org/resources/../../../resources/infoDetail.asp?ID=5816&flag=report>The
Palestinian Child: the politics of prisoners (May 2005)
* Defence for Children International -
Palestine section,
<http://www.dci-pal.org/english/publ/research/2005/surviving.pdf>Surviving
the Present, Facing the Future: an Analysis of
Human Rights Violations against Palestinian Children in 2004 (April 2005)
*
<http://www.ohchr.org/english/bodies/chr/sessions/62/listdocs.htm#8>Last
Report of the Special Rapporteur on the situation
of human rights in the Palestinian territories
occupied since 1967 (Mr. John Dugard) (2006)
* Amnesty International,
<http://web.amnesty.org/library/index/ENGMDE150742002>Israel
and the Occupied Territories: Mass detention in
cruel, inhuman and degrading conditions (May 2002)
* Website:
<http://www.dci-pal.org/english/DisplayConfFR.cfm?DocId=350&CategoryId=4>Defence
for Children International –
Palestine<http://www.dci-pal.org/english/DisplayConfFR.cfm?DocId=350&CategoryId=4>
Section
----------
Organisation Contact Details:
Defence for Children International - Palestine Section
PO Box 55201
Jerusalem, Israel
Main Office: Ramallah, Palestine
Tel: 00 972 2 240 7530
Email: <mailto:dci at dci-pal.org>dci at dci-pal.org
Website: <http://www.dci-pal.org>www.dci-pal.org
The Freedom Archives
522 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
(415) 863-9977
www.freedomarchives.org
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://freedomarchives.org/pipermail/news_freedomarchives.org/attachments/20060425/2a045650/attachment.htm>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: 2bf30cbc.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 1434 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://freedomarchives.org/pipermail/news_freedomarchives.org/attachments/20060425/2a045650/attachment.jpg>
More information about the News
mailing list