Hundreds of additional strikers join as IPS represses strike through mass transfers and isolation

May 3, 2012 Samidoun

 

Tadamun International for Human Rights said that the Israel Prison Service continues to repress and harass hunger strikers, transferring the isolated hunger striking prisoners in Ashkelon solitary confinement from one cell to another several times a day in order to tire them physically as well as psychologically.

According to Ahmed Betawi of the Solidarity Foundation, Ashkelon’s prison administration breaks into cells of isolated striking prisoners daily at late hours and transfers them to other cells without allowing them to take their belongings.

Betawi also revealed that representatives of the Zionist prison administration held meetings with isolated striking prisoners each alone to negotiate the end of the strike which was rejected by the prisoners who maintained that negotiations can only be held with the prisoner Mahmoud Issa, the representative of the isolated prisoners in Ashkelon.

Betawi also reported that prisoners in Hadarim prison are being transferred to Ramon prison, including Karim Yousef Fadel Younis, the longest-serving Palestinian prisoner n the occupation prisons, who has been held for 29 years who has been on hunger strike since its launch. He remarked that transfer is being used in an attempt to break the strike, noting that Osman Bilal, Mohammed Sabha, and Rami Suleiman, all leaders in the strike, had recently been transferred into solitary confinement in Jalama prison.

220 prisoners are on hunger strike in Ofer prison; all 105 Palestinian prisoners in Eshel prison are on hunger strike; and in Ohalei Keidar prison, the 96 hunger strikers are all placed in solitary confinement cells, 2 prisoners to 1 cell. 20 additional prisoners have joined in Mejiddo prison, and more prisoners have been joining daily in Ofer prison – Wafa Abu Ghoulmeh, the wife of strike leadership committee member Ahed Abu Ghoulmeh, noted that hunger striking prisoners in section 16 in Ofer had bee moved into isolation in Ofer, and that the occupation authorities have confiscated all electrical appliances from striking prisoners in Ofer. Former prisoner Samer Abu Sir also reported that Wurud Qassem, a woman prisoner who was not released in October in the prisoner exchange in which all women prisoners were supposed to be released, has joined the full open-ended hunger strike, up from a partial strike.

Walid Salameh, a prisoner serving a life sentence in Eshel, reported that prison officials demanding daily call-outs by number, if prisoners don’t stand, they are denied lawyer visits, including those who cannot stand because of health and the hunger strike.