Prison

So with 'kidnappings' at check points still happening frequently, prisoners as young as 18 months (Nour, he was actually born in prison as many months ago), over 10,000 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli gaols (out of a population of 3.3 million according to demographer Sergio DellaPergola - which would be the equivalent of France imprisoning 200,000 people from the UK), and Palestinian Prisoner Day tomorrow on the anniversary of the arrest of Nour's mother (I'm sure this is just a coincidence actually but it sounded nice) - I think it's time to write about the Palestinian prisoners inside Israel.

I can only give a brief outline of the problems because there are so many

1) Administrative detention
http://www.btselem.org/english/Administrative_Detention/Statistics.asp

So in England we are concerned and upset about the 42 day limit - well I am anyway, it's a long time to be banged up for nothing - lse your job, potentially miss the birth of a child, an event that you had been planning, hospital check ups... a month and a half. OK. In Palestine the person that has been under 'administration' the longest has wound up nearly 5 years now. 5 years without trial, that's some pretty sluggish administration if you ask me.

And what happens in 'administrative detention' - I went to a talk by a former inmate, arrested because he was politically active at University advocating respect for Human Rights in the occupied territories. Something that I do in the UK - he was in prison for 3 years without charge.

To be fair administrative detention isn't as bad as proper prison in Israel - the other side of the military/quango courts. You are allowed books - you used to be allowed 8, in line with the Geneva convention, but now that has been reduced to 1 and Israel have just made a decision to ban them altogether. You are allowed to make the dorm look nice and decorate it, but all the decorations are ripped down and the place is stripped out every 4 months or so, you are allowed to smoke... but you still get tortured, or 'interrogated with sustained exerted force' - the techniques make the fake daily injections and jump suits in GITMO look tame. Israel has killed dozens of people using torture techniques that have been scientifically refined to minimize physical damage while increase pain.

Torture
http://www.addameer.org/resources/reports/torture-eng.pdf

I met a student at Berziet university that had been imprisoned for 3 years from 16 to 19 because he belonged to a political family - he described 'Shabeh' - or handcuffing your hands and feet to a tiny sloped chair designed to give you back pain and put pressure on your wrists and ankles. He was in this chair for 3 days without having done anything wrong, without and interrogator presesnt. The justification for the use of this technique is so that the interrigator is protected from prisoners lashing out.

He also described iscolation cells under Jerusalem city, where you are kept in a room that is just too small to stand to lie straight in, you have a mat and a pot and you are given just enough food to live - no sugar or carbs or solids. You are left in the dark for what feels like weeks (probably actually weeks, he knows that his friends were away for about 3 weeks before coming back, having been put in the cell for the whole time) and the bucket for your toilet is only emptied twice a week. You see no-one, you speak to no-one. Some people come out of this experience literaly insane. Again, it is used as a repressive measure but it is also used arbritrarily to crush people's spirits.

You are given "light glasses" which are strapped to your head while your are handcuffed, that shine bright white light directly into your eyes - it is one techniques, along with tying you in uncomfortable positions, playing one extrememly loud rock song over and over and over and over for days, dousing you with hot or icey water - you don't know which until it hits you. People have been deprived of sleep for up to 20 days. You aren't supposed to survive 11. It wrecks your nervous system and makes you more vulnerable and susceptable to the torture techniques used to keep you awake.

They can shake you so hard that you die from nervous damage (this has happened over 6 times), suffocate you with a bag over your head that the guards usually defecate in (shit in), stamp on your balls or apply gradually increasing force until you pass out from the pain - girls, trust us, this really really does hurt.

So apart from the other physical techniques of plain beating, tying you in positions that will damage your back and jumping on you - that one's called the "banana", depriving you of a wash change of clothes or certain nutrients in your food - or indeed taking food away altogether, depriving you of water and "frog squatting", they also employ nasty psychological games. Telling you that they will kill you in a week and counting down, telling you that your wife or children are dead, telling you that your friends have informed on you, telling you that they have clear evidence that you are a terrorist, telling you that you will never be let out of prison etc. etc. etc.

OK, probably spent too long on torture...


Children.
http://www.btselem.org/english/statistics/Minors_in_Custody.asp
As of now there are 54 children under Sixteen, from 18 months to 16 - it's really not all teenagers, there's 7 year old Majeb and 10 Ihab as examples.

I just find this difficult. How could you torture a 7 year old?

Niveen is a little girl in the camp, she doesn't speak and people aren't sure of her age (around 10)

I'm using personal examples here in case people can't be bothered to empathise with the statistics.

The kids are all in administrative detention under 14 because it's illegal under israeli law to keep them in the same prisons under this age. Please bear in mind that the age at which an Israeli becomes an adult is 18, the age at which a Palestinian under their jurisdiction becomes an adult is 14.

Mohamed, a boy that's 22 in his second year of University studying hard to get a 1st in economics so that he can understand the system of control (really like me, we get on well despite the lacking of arabic), spent 3 years in gaol from 16 to 19, I am living in his home in the Azar camp in Bethlehem.

Palestine is littered with young adults that have been tortured as children, I have come accross so many people that have been through prison and I've not even been here 2 weeks!

There were 348 16 to 18 year olds in prison on the 28th Feb this year. I don't know what the number is now.



Trials
OK, so these are a farce. They are military courts, they comprise of 3 judges appointed by the military and no jury. Only one of the judges has to have had legal training and its majority rule, so figure that one out! 'Nuff said.


Family visits


Hygiene
each section of 120 prisoners gets one bar of soap 5 days a week... hmmm.. I'm all up for sharing is caring but this is going a little too far.
Prisoners aren't given a change of clothes, so that if you were arrested in your pyjamas, then you wear only them, if you were arrested in clothes stained in blood from your wife - these are the clothes that you will wear until someone that loves you enough to make the treacherous and tedious journey to visit you brings new clothes.

Healthcare
this is poorly neglected, the waiting lists are longer than the NHS and check ups are done through a fence... but what do we expect, it is prison... but the ICRC(international committee of the Red Cross) really aren't too happy with it.

Phone calls
while mass murderers from Israel are allowed to make phone calls, political prisoners human rights advocates and unfortunate members of the wrong family are denied this, so they smuggle in mobile phones - a practice that carries a HUGE risk in terms of opening them up to maltreatment, but that's the level of love for their families, which often aren't told which prison they're in (there are about 50 around the Middle East)

Unfortunately, they are closing the office now. But the list goes on, there are many issues facing prisoners that I haven't touched upon, the psychological damage that is inflicted, the stunted growth and accelarated aging, the difficulties facing their lawyers or human rights organisations, the stricly controlled mail, the banning of family visits for periods of up to 2 years (I'm talking about all visits here, not just for one person), food, and other forms of abuse such as rape (mainly of female prisoners).

If this has left you drawing comparisons to the nationalist regimes in Europe in the 20th Century, you're not the only one!

I'll put up a little jiffy about how I've been settling myself down here shortly - it's pretty sad to hear about the prisons and having experienced a prolongued period of pain myself i find if incredible difficult to acknowledge that torture is happening, to face the facts, without it kind of scrambling my system a bit. I have such a respect for the people that I have heard talk about their experiences, it really isn't easy - especially as there is no psychological help or rehabilitation when you come out the other end.