Palestinian Prisoner’s Day

Occupied Al-Quds, (ST) – On the 17th of April of every year, the Palestinian people in their homeland and diaspora commemorate Prisoner’s Day, which was adopted by the Palestinian National Council in 1974 as a national day in order to support prisoners and their right to freedom and to remind the peoples of the world of the types of torture and heinous violations to which they are exposed daily in Israeli occupation detention centers in blatant violation of International law, human rights and the Fourth Geneva Convention.

Prisoner’s Day this year comes amid the genocidal war waged by the occupation against Gaza Strip since last October 7, and the unprecedented escalation in terrorism practiced by the occupation forces and settler gangs in the West Bank.

Since the beginning of the aggression, the west Bank cities and towns have witnessed a brutal detention campaign that has affected more than 8,240 Palestinian people, including 520 children, 275 women, and 100 journalists. There is also the detention of thousands of people from Gaza Strip, whose fate is not clear because the occupation continues to carry out the crime of enforced disappearance against them, and refuses to provide human rights institutions, including the relevant international and Palestinian ones, with any information about them and their places of detention.

In rejection of the war of extermination, the institutions of the prisoners and the Palestinian national forces are today organizing a stand in the cities of the West Bank so that Prisoner’s Day will be a day for Gaza and the heroic prisoners in Occupation detention centers.

The Palestinian National Council affirmed that the issue of prisoners will remain at the top of the national priorities because it is the issue of the Palestinian people who are struggling to get rid of the occupation and liberate the land, and no effort will be spared until the prisoners are liberated from the occupation detention centers. The Council pointed out that more than a quarter of the Palestinian people entered the occupation prisons, as there have been approximately one million detentions since 1948, one of the largest detention operations in contemporary history.

The National Council indicated that the occupation is waging a comprehensive and systematic war that has turned the entire Palestinian people into a captive people who carry on their bodies the pain of detention and torture. The Palestinian young detainees spend their lives in total darkness and under the weight of arbitrary and racist practices, and are subjected to liquidation in cold blood in front of the world.

Palestinian Minister of Women’s Affairs, Mona Al-Khalili, in turn, called on the international community and human rights institutions to pressure the occupation authorities to immediately release all prisoners, open an international investigation into the occupation’s crimes against them, hold it accountable for them, and oblige it to allow the Red Cross to visit them and determine their conditions and the violations they are being exposed to.

Raghda Sawas