The People's Record

I saw one of this artist’s cartoons reblogged just a minute ago and I looked him up. His cartoons seem to be really on-point:  Source

April 25 - Update from Gitmo: The military reported on Wednesday that 92 of the detainees at Guantanamo are now considered hunger striking, 17 are being force-fed, & 2 are in the hospital. Get the latest at: www.GitmoJustice.com

NYT publishes op-ed from Gitmo prisoner: Gitmo is killing me
April 16, 2013

One man here weighs just 77 pounds. Another, 98. Last thing I knew, I weighed 132, but that was a month ago.

I’ve been on a hunger strike since Feb. 10 and have lost well over 30 pounds. I will not eat until they restore my dignity.

I’ve been detained at Guantánamo for 11 years and three months. I have never been charged with any crime. I have never received a trial.

I could have been home years ago — no one seriously thinks I am a threat — but still I am here. Years ago the military said I was a “guard” for Osama bin Laden, but this was nonsense, like something out of the American movies I used to watch. They don’t even seem to believe it anymore. But they don’t seem to care how long I sit here, either.

When I was at home in Yemen, in 2000, a childhood friend told me that in Afghanistan I could do better than the $50 a month I earned in a factory, and support my family. I’d never really traveled, and knew nothing about Afghanistan, but I gave it a try.

I was wrong to trust him. There was no work. I wanted to leave, but had no money to fly home. After the American invasion in 2001, I fled to Pakistan like everyone else. The Pakistanis arrested me when I asked to see someone from the Yemeni Embassy. I was then sent to Kandahar, and put on the first plane to Gitmo.

Last month, on March 15, I was sick in the prison hospital and refused to be fed. A team from the E.R.F. (Extreme Reaction Force), a squad of eight military police officers in riot gear, burst in. They tied my hands and feet to the bed. They forcibly inserted an IV into my hand. I spent 26 hours in this state, tied to the bed. During this time I was not permitted to go to the toilet. They inserted a catheter, which was painful, degrading and unnecessary. I was not even permitted to pray.

I will never forget the first time they passed the feeding tube up my nose. I can’t describe how painful it is to be force-fed this way. As it was thrust in, it made me feel like throwing up. I wanted to vomit, but I couldn’t. There was agony in my chest, throat and stomach. I had never experienced such pain before. I would not wish this cruel punishment upon anyone.

I am still being force-fed. Two times a day they tie me to a chair in my cell. My arms, legs and head are strapped down. I never know when they will come. Sometimes they come during the night, as late as 11 p.m., when I’m sleeping.

There are so many of us on hunger strike now that there aren’t enough qualified medical staff members to carry out the force-feedings; nothing is happening at regular intervals. They are feeding people around the clock just to keep up.

During one force-feeding the nurse pushed the tube about 18 inches into my stomach, hurting me more than usual, because she was doing things so hastily. I called the interpreter to ask the doctor if the procedure was being done correctly or not.

It was so painful that I begged them to stop feeding me. The nurse refused to stop feeding me. As they were finishing, some of the “food” spilled on my clothes. I asked them to change my clothes, but the guard refused to allow me to hold on to this last shred of my dignity.

When they come to force me into the chair, if I refuse to be tied up, they call the E.R.F. team. So I have a choice. Either I can exercise my right to protest my detention, and be beaten up, or I can submit to painful force-feeding.

The only reason I am still here is that President Obama refuses to send any detainees back to Yemen. This makes no sense. I am a human being, not a passport, and I deserve to be treated like one.

I do not want to die here, but until President Obama and Yemen’s president do something, that is what I risk every day.

Where is my government? I will submit to any “security measures” they want in order to go home, even though they are totally unnecessary.

I will agree to whatever it takes in order to be free. I am now 35. All I want is to see my family again and to start a family of my own.

The situation is desperate now. All of the detainees here are suffering deeply. At least 40 people here are on a hunger strike. People are fainting with exhaustion every day. I have vomited blood.

And there is no end in sight to our imprisonment. Denying ourselves food and risking death every day is the choice we have made.

I just hope that because of the pain we are suffering, the eyes of the world will once again look to Guantánamo before it is too late.

Samir Naji al Hasan Moqbel, a prisoner at Guantánamo Bay since 2002, told this story, through an Arabic interpreter, to his lawyers at the legal charity Reprieve in an unclassified telephone call.

Source

Guantanamo detainees’ hunger strike enters third month
April 13, 2013

A hunger strike by detainees at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, has entered its third month. The Department of Defense said 43 detainees were striking, and 11 were being fed forcibly through a tube inserted through the nose to the stomach.

Lawyers for the detainees say the number of hunger strikers is much higher.

The Department of Defense classifies hunger strikers as those, who have missed nine consecutive meals, and says the forced-feedings are not part of a policy specific to Guantanamo detainees, but are part of the Federal Bureau of Prisons guidelines.

Cori Crider, the lawyer who represents, Samir Moqbel, a Yemeni detainee, who has joined the hunger strike, says she recently talked to her client.

Crider described how Moqbel was forcibly fed.

“They chained his arms to the bed, chained his legs to the bed. He was left like that, he said, for 26 hours. He was not allowed to use the restroom; they just put a catheter in. They didn’t allow him to pray and while he was chained to the bed they forcibly fed him.”

While the strike began as a protest against the way the guards searched copies of the Quran inside the detainees’ cells, it has transformed into a bigger protest, the lawyer adds.

“Now it’s about eleven years of indefinite detention, two administrations, one of which claimed it was going to close this prison within a year. I think these people are just trying to remind the world, ‘hey we’re still here, half of us are cleared. Please, please demand that the United States do something about this.’”

Crider says her client discussed an attempted suicide by another one of the detainees, howqever, U.S. authorities denied the incident.

U.S. Army Captain Jason Wright, who represents Obaydallah, an Afghan detainee, who is also a hunger striker, visited his client recently and says Obaydallah has lost over 40 pounds.

“Obaydallah described the detention camp as a village decimated by an attack. The detainees are weak, the don’t move, they have no energy and everyone has the face of death and despair.”

Wright says over 50 detainees have been moved from camp six, a communal living facility, to camp five, where there are solitary cells usually reserved for detainees that are deemed to be troublemakers.

Full article

“I would prefer to die on my hospital bed to being deported from Jerusalem. Jerusalem is my soul and my life. If I was uprooted from there, my soul would be uprooted from my body. My life is meaningless away from Jerusalem. No land on earth will be able to embrace me other than Jerusalem. Therefore, my return will be only to Jerusalem but nowhere else. I advise all Palestinians to embrace their land and their villages and never succumb to the Israeli Occupation’s wishes. I don’t see this issue as a personal cause that is related to Samer Issawi. It is a national issue, a conviction and a principle that every Palestinian who loves his homeland’s sacred soil should hold. Finally, I reaffirm for the thousands time that I continue my hunger strike until either freedom and return to Jerusalem or martyrdom!” - Samer Issawi, Palestinian prisoner on hunger strike for more than 245 days.

(Source: palsolidarity.org)

100+ Guantanamo inmates on hunger strike, possibly in grave condition
March 12, 2013

Lawyers for Guantanamo Bay inmates have claimed “all but a few men” are on a hunger strike over their Qurans being taken away. The condition of the strikers “appears to be rapidly deteriorating and reaching a potentially critical level,” they said.

Most of 130 people housed in Camp 6 of Guantanamo Bay may be involved in the strike.

“My client and other men have reported that most of the detainees in Camp 6 are on strike, except for a small few who are elderly or sick,” Pardiss Kebriaei, a New York lawyer representing Yemeni detainee Ghaleb Al-Bihanim, told AFP. Men have reported coughed up blood, lost consciousness and were forced to move to other wings of the facility for observation.

The first reports of the widespread hunger strike in Guantanamo emerged in early March.

The protest was allegedly sparked by interference with the inmates’ personal belongings.

“Since approximately February 6, 2013, camp authorities have been confiscating detainees’ personal items, including blankets, sheets, towels, mats, razors, toothbrushes, books, family photos, religious CDs, and letters, including legal mail; and restricting their exercise, seemingly without provocation or cause,” the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) said in a March letter to the US Military.

They added that men’s Qurans were confiscated in a “desecrating”manner, and that prayer time was not respected. Most, if not all, of the Guantanamo detainees come from the Middle East, and are devout Muslims.

Prison officials have acknowledged that the hunger strike is taking place. However, they deny that it is a large-scale event: Nine detainees are refusing food, five of whom are being fed through tubes inserted into their stomachs, according to Robert Durand, director of public affairs for the Joint Task Force Guantanamo.

Durand also said that the claims of desecration of the Quran were unfounded.

“To be clear: there have been no incidents of desecration of the Quran by guards or translators, and nothing unusual happened during a routine search for contraband,” he told AFP.

Guantanamo Bay is a US Military prison facility opened on the wake of 9/11, as part of the George W. Bush administration’s ‘War on Terror.’ The prison currently holds 166 people, many of whom have spent over a decade there without official charges brought against them. Washington has alleged the inmates are terrorists who plotted or acted against the American people. Guantanamo Bay became a source of heated public debate after it was revealed that US forces had tortured detainees.

Barack Obama promised to close the facility at the beginning of his first term as president, but the facility remains open.

Source

Not only has the facility remained open, Obama oversaw a $40 million renovation in July 2012. The prison has received more than $500 million in renovations since 9/11.

Also, many Guantanamo detainees had been found to be innocent over the years, even though they served many years inside the prison. WikiLeaks released military files that revealed about 150 innocent men have been imprisoned in Guantanamo in the past few years.

Most were Afghan or Pakistani farmers, drivers or working men who were arrested in an attempt at intelligence gathering & never had charges brought against them or were ever taken to court but held for lengthy periods of time.

Cambodian workers on hunger strike against Walmart & H&M
February 28, 2013

Self-organized garment workers at a Walmart and H&M supplier factory in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, have been camping in front of their shuttered factory for almost two months to prevent their bosses from taking out the sewing machinery.

Now the workers have escalated to blocking roads, and will launch a hunger strike February 27—all to push Walmart and H&M to pay them the back wages they are owed. Their cause is drawing support from workers at another Walmart subcontractor on the other side of the world.

“We decided to go on hunger strike to show that we not just any workers,” said one of the leaders, Sorn Sothy, 26, who works in the warehousing part of the Cambodian factory. “We are strong, committed, and united.”

The workers were informed in September that their factory, Kingsland Garment Co., Ltd., would temporarily close until January. Under Cambodian labor law, they would be paid 50 percent of their wages during this time, and brought back to work in January.

But in December, the paychecks stopped coming. The company union told the workers that the company was bankrupt and the owner had fled the country.

The garment workers are owed around $200,000 collectively—less than what Walmart makes in profits every six minutes.

Since their boss-run union wouldn’t fight back, 200 workers organized themselves and began protesting outside the factory gates January 1. In the middle of the night January 3, they noticed company staff attempting to remove the sewing machines from the factory.

“We decided to start sleeping outside of the factory to prevent management from taking the machinery out,” said Yorn Sok Leng, 30, who has worked at the factory for two years.

With the help of a worker center, the Community Legal Education Centre (CLEC), the workers occupied the outside of the factory—setting up tarps, a sleeping area, and a kitchen.

Flying Squads

Walmart and H&M have agreed to come to Cambodia to meet with them March 1, but the garment workers are continuing to find new ways to hold the brands’ feet to the fire. In the days leading up to their meeting, in addition to the hunger strike, they plan “flying squad” roadblocks, a tactic they have borrowed from workers at another shuttered factory.

They staged their first roadblock February 24 in grassroots fashion—only calling to invite allies from the worker center the night before the demonstration.

Many of the people who were delayed by the two-hour roadblock knew about the garment workers’ fight, and actually cheered them on.

In an email to the CLEC, Walmart and H&M have claimed they ended their relationships with Kingsland Garment in September, and had “paid in full,” so they had no responsibility for what happened to the workers afterwards.

Workers aren’t buying it. “The owner ran away. It is Walmart and H&M that made the profits off of our work, so they are the ones that need to pay,” said Oun Buy, 33, who has worked at the factory for 10 years.

It’s a familiar problem: multinational corporations use layers of subcontractors to duck responsibility.

Walmart in particular is notorious for failing to enforce its own rules. Its supplier standards make it responsible for contractors’ behavior, but instead of forcing improvements, when a factory is caught in violations, it is easiest for Walmart to cut and run—firing the contractor and leaving workers with nothing.

Supply Chain Solidarity

The International Ladies Garment Workers Union dealt with this problem in the U.S. in the early 20th century by developing jobber’s agreements, which made the “jobber”—in today’s terms, the brand—responsible for wages and conditions in factories producing their garments. Such agreements, won with strikes and other militant actions, are widely credited with ending sweatshop conditions in the U.S. garment industry.

But brands eventually found a way to circumvent these agreements: moving production to the non-union South—and then, with globalization, overseas, to countries where labor laws and enforcement are weaker, and where union leaders are physically attacked, threatened, and even assassinated.

Although the race to the bottom in labor standards has hurt garment workers around the world, many in the U.S. accepted the line that Cambodian (or Chinese or Bengali) workers were taking “our” jobs. Cross-border solidarity in the Walmart supply chain offers a seed of hope that this perception can change.

“We’re thankful to the Walmart warehouse workers,” said Poung Phirum, 23. “The Americans who are supporting us work for Walmart, just like us.”

Workers at an Illinois warehouse, who load and unload garments and other Walmart products 14 hours a day, plan to show their support for the Cambodian workers with a demonstration at a Walmart store.

The Illinois group, organizing with the worker center Warehouse Workers for Justice, won health and safety improvements after a 21-day strike last fall. Others at Walmart-subcontracted warehouses are organizing with workers centers in California (Warehouse Workers United) and New Jersey (New Labor).

“We are all in the same fight, whether in Cambodia, Bangladesh, America, Mexico, or anywhere else,” said Mike Compton, one of the Illinois strikers. “It’s time for [Walmart] to take responsibility for conditions in the factories, warehouse, stores, and everything else in their supply chain.”

Source

How Israel gets away with torturing Palestinians to death
February 26, 2013

Six days after Arafat Jaradat was arrested by the Israeli army and the Shin Bet, he was dead. Between the date of his arrest - February 18 - and the day of his death - February 23 - his lawyer Kamil Sabbagh met with Arafat only once: in front of a military judge at the Shin Bet’s Kishon interrogation facility.

Sabbagh reported that when he saw Jaradat, the man was terrified. Arafat told his lawyer that he was in acute pain from being beaten and forced to sit in stress positions with his hands bound behind his back.

When it announced his death, Israeli Prison Service claimed Arafat - who leaves a pregnant widow and two children - died from cardiac arrest. However, the subsequent autopsy found no blood clot in his heart. In fact, the autopsy concluded that Arafat, who turned 30 this year, was in fine cardiovascular health.

What the final autopsy did find, however, was that Jaradat had been pummelled by repeated blows to his chest and body and had sustained a total of six broken bones in his spine, arms and legs; his lips lacerated; his face badly bruised.

The ordeal that Arafat suffered before he died at the hands of Israel’s Shin Bet is common to many Palestinians that pass through Israel’s prisons. According to the prisoners’ rights organisation Addameer, since 1967, a total of 72 Palestinians have been killed as a result of torture and 53 due to medical neglect. Less than a month before Jaradat was killed, Ashraf Abu Dhra died while in Israeli custody in a case that Addameer argues was a direct result of medical neglect.

The legal impunity of the Shin Bet, commonly referred to as the GSS, and its torture techniques has been well established. Between 2001 and 2011, 700 Palestinians lodged complaints with the State Attorney’s Office but not a single one has been criminally investigated.

Writing in Adalah’s 2012 publication, On Torture [PDF], Bana Shoughry-Badarne, an attorney and the Legal Director of the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel, wrote, “The GSS’s impunity is absolute.”

Israel’s High Court has been extravagantly helpful in securing the Shin Bet with its imperviousness to accountability to international law, and thus enabling widespread and lethal torture.

In August of 2012, Israel’s High Court rejected petitions submitted by Israeli human rights organisations Adalah, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel and PCATI to demand that Israeli attorney general, Yehuda Weinstein, carry out criminal investigations into each allegation of torture by the Shin Bet.

And in the first week of February, two weeks before Arafat was killed, the High Court of Justice threw out Adalah’s petition that demanded the GSS videotape and audio record all of its interrogations in order to comply with requirements of the United Nations Convention Against Torture (CAT) to which Israel is a signatory.

In May 2009, UNCAT condemned [PDF] Israel for exempting the Shin Bet’s interrogations from audio and video recording, noting that such oversight is an essential preventative measure to curtail torture. Yet despite this admonition, in 2012 the Knesset extended the exemption for another three years.

Rationalising its failure to comply with this most basic requirement of recording interrogations, the State maintains that it is in the interests of “national security” that its interrogation techniques not be made public.

Arafat was killed under torture. Torture is routine. But the following is not routine: upon the announcement of his death, thousands of Palestinians, already unified in solidarity with the arduous struggle waged by Palestinian hunger striking prisoners, responded in force. At least 3,000 prisoners refused their meals; thousands poured into the streets of Gaza and impassioned demonstrations erupted across the West Bank. While the State of Israel continues to deploy its deadly arsenal of weapons to repress Palestinians, the banality of the evil of this regime is, as it will always be, eclipsed by the mighty Palestinian will for self-determination.

Source

Thousands of Palestinians held in Israeli jails are staging a one-day hunger strike to protest the death of a fellow inmate
February 24, 2013

“About 3,000 prisoners announced that they would refuse meals,” Israel Prisons Service spokeswoman Sivan Weizman, told the AFP news agency on Sunday.

Arafat Jaradat, a 30-year-old father of two, from the village of Sair near Hebron in the southern West Bank, died on Saturday in an Israeli jail from what prison authorities said appeared to have been cardiac arrest.

Palestinian officials and the detainee’s family alleged that Jaradat was mistreated by the Shin Bet, Israel’s internal intelligence service, saying he was healthy at the time of his arrest last week.

An autopsy on Jaradat’s body was due to take place at Israel’s national forensic institute on Sunday and Issa Qaraqaa, the Palestinian minister in charge of prisoner affairs, said a Palestinian doctor and Jaradat family members would be present.

Al Jazeera’s Nicole Johnston, reporting from outside Ofer military prison, near Ramallah, said there were about 800 to 900 Palestinian prisoners there taking part in the hunger strike over Jaradat’s death.

Johnston said there was a “heavy Israeli police presence” outside the prison.

In the Gaza Strip, hundreds of Palestinians from Hamas, which governs the territory, Islamic Jihad and other factions, also gathered to protest against Jaradat’s death.

Speaking to Al Jazeera, Fawzi Barhoum, an Hamas spokesperson, said: ”This is a crime against our prisoners committed by the Israeli government.

“There must be a third Intifada [uprising] and a revolution … to pressure Israel to protect our prisoners.”

Jaradat’s death could exacerbate tensions in Israel and the Palestinian territories which have been rocked in past weeks by protests of solidarity with four other prisoners detained by Israel who are on hunger strike.

‘Unequivocal demand’

Protests in solidarity with Samer Issawi, one of the four hunger strikers who has refused food since August to protest against his detention, were also held on Sunday. 

Issawi’s family recently told Al Jazeera he would be close to death if he continues his action.

Protesters in Issawi’s village and in different parts of Hebron city hurled stones at Israeli security forces who responded with tear gas and stun grenades, witnesses said.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s envoy has made “an unequivocal demand” to the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority to quell the wave of protests in the West Bank, a government statement.

Sunday’s statement added that Netanyahu had also ordered the transfer of January arrears of tax revenues that Israel collects on the behalf of the Palestinians but has been withholding.

Israel holds more than 4,600 Palestinians in jail on charges that range from stone-throwing to deadly attacks on Israeli targets. Of the detainees, 159 are being held without charge or trial. 

Source

In the name of God the Merciful

Greetings to all the Palestinian people and the freedom loving people of the world, those who take part in the battle for the freedom of the prisoners, all the prisoners, and first of all the heroic sick prisoners in the Ramlah Prison hospital. These heroes who have sacrificed their bodies and long years to Palestine and the Palestinian people deserve from us that we struggle for their liberation.

Today the Palestinian people proved to the occupation, despite the difficult conditions they go through, that the national cause and the prisoners’ issue are of high priority for every Palestinian. The economic situation and unemployment do not distract the Palestinian people from their prisoners, because they are people of bravery who took upon themselves to defend the Arab and Islamic nation and its holy sites. It saddens me so much that I am not with you to share with you this great battle for supporting the prisoners. But I decided to escalate my strike by avoiding drinking water in order to join this movement and the great battle that you wage on the ground.

I send a warm greeting for all of you who stay in the protest tents everywhere, especially those who are on hunger strike. I send greetings to the participants at the Nazareth tent, first of them Father Atallah Hanna, and to all the people involved in the sit-ins and marches in support of the prisoners.

I send greetings to the heroes who gathered yesterday in front of the court and broke all standards, restrictions and concepts of the occupation (the division between Western Jerusalem and Eastern Jerusalem). They proved to the occupation that AlQuds is one, it is our city, and their pure feet wandered the alleys that were walked by our forefathers before this occupation came, kill them and expels the rest of them.

I greet you, I’m proud of you and I draw the power to resist and my morale from you and your struggle. Yesterday, when I saw you in front of the courthouse, I became free and my jailer became the prisoner. I noticed the humiliation on the guards’ faces when they saw you clinging to your land despite the Judaization.

By God, I kiss those feet that liberated yesterday part of the lands of our holy city and raised the Palestinian flag high. Kissing these pure feet is an honor for me. You are Blessed, Jerusalem, with your heroic sons, the protectors of the Holy Land, the Church of the Resurrection and the Al-Aqsa Mosque. We will meet soon, God willing, O heroes of Palestine and the free people of the world.

I send my greetings to the free people of the world everywhere, especially in our sister Egypt, to the fans of Zamalek group and Al-Jazeera Sports commentator. I send my greetings and salute to every person. And to Shahed and Maleka.

Concerning my health, I was transferred on Thursday to some hospital, I do not remember its name, after suffering a sharp drop in blood pressure and heart beat where the pressure was 74/40 and pulse 35 beats per minute. I lost consciousness.

I continue my strike. Either Freedom or Martyrdom.

- Samer Issawi, the Palestinian hunger striker who has refused food for more than 200 days. He was sentenced to eight months in prison, but because of time served, he will be released on March 6.

Source

But his struggle still isn’t over. Free Samer & all political prisoners! 

Over 1000 protest at Ofer prison in support of Palestinian hunger strikers
February 16, 2013

Over 1000 protest in front of Ofer prison in support of hunger striking prisoners on Friday.

Two protesters were injured from live ammunition in addition to dozens from rubber coated bullets during the clashes erupted after the Friday Prayer in front of Ofer prison.

Over a thousand Palestinians took part today in the Friday prayer and protest which was organized by the Popular Committees, titled “Friday of breaking the silence” in support of Palestinian prisoners on hunger strike, Samer Isawi, Ayman Sharawneh, Tareq Qa’adan and Jafar Iz Eldin. Protesters called for their release and the release of all Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.

Upon the end of the Friday prayer, Israeli army started firing immediately sound grenades and tear gas canisters at protesters which lead to clashes with the protesters. The army fired live ammunition; rubber coated steel bullets and tear gas canisters.  As a result, over hundred protesters received medical treatment for injuries from rubber coated steel bullets or tear-gas induced asphyxiation. Thirteen protesters were transferred to hospital, two injured from live ammunition in their shoulders and the rest from rubber coated bullets. They are all in stable condition. 

In addition to the protest in front of Ofer, the weekly demonstrations in the popular struggle villages were dedicated to support prisoners and clashes erupted in different locations in the West Bank including Jalameh checkpoint, Isawiyeh village, Nabi Saleh, Kufr Qaddoum and others. One young female was hit in head from sound grenade fired directly at her in the village of Nabi Saleh and was transferred to Ramallah hospital.

Source

Palestinian in “critical condition” on day 203 of hunger strike
February 12, 2013

Palestinian prisoner Samer Issawi is in “critical condition” after 203 days spent on a hunger strike, activists said, sparking fears on Monday that he might not survive his protest against Israel’s abusive prison system.

Issawi is one of thousands of Palestinian prisoners who have gone on hunger strikes in the past year to denounce Israel’s policy of administrative detention and poor life conditions in prisons.

The 33-year old has been refusing food since July 2012, making it one of the longest hunger strikes in the world.

Issawi stopped drinking water and taking vitamins earlier this month, and is refusing medical care. His weight dropped to less than 47 kilograms and he is confined to a wheelchair, suffering from loss of vision, fainting and vomiting blood.

“His heart could stop at any moment,” said Daleen Elshaer, a coordinator for the Free Samer Issawi Campaign.

Elshaer told Al-Akhbar that Issawi’s lawyer and human rights activists were denied accessed to Issawi until Saturday during his most recent hospitalization outside of the infamous Ramlah prison.

Issawi was first arrested in 2002 and sentenced to thirty years in prison over weapons possession and forming a military group. He was released in an October 2011 prisoner swap agreement between Israel and Hamas in which the Jewish state freed 1,027 mostly-Palestinians in exchange for an Israeli soldier captured in 2006.

He was rearrested on 7 July 2012 and accused of violating the terms of his release by leaving Jerusalem. Israeli prosecutors are seeking to cancel his amnesty and detain him for 20 years, the remainder of his previous sentence, despite there being no other charges against him.

Another Palestinian hunger striker, Jaafar Ezzedine, recently threatened to follow in Issawi’s footsteps and refuse water unless Israel meets his demands, according to the Palestine News Network.

According to prisoners rights group Addameer, 4,743 Palestinians were held in Israeli prisons as of January, including 178 in administrative detention.

While the campaign to free Issawi has tried to attract broader international attention, Elshaer said they are too often faced with a wall of silence.

“Samer is non-violently resisting a violent occupation, but nobody is willing to talk about him because he is Palestinian,” she said. “Would it take his death for people to cover his story?”

Elshaer added that Issawi’s family has been repeatedly harassed by Israeli forces. Water access was cut to his sister’s house, and his brother’s home was reportedly demolished by the Israeli army in early January.

But while Issawi’s health is a big cause for concern for his supporters, they keep faith in him and his cause.

“God is protecting him because he is innocent,” Elshaer asserted.

Source

Chief Theresa Spence to end hunger strike Thursday
January 23, 2013

Attawapiskat Chief Theresa Spence will end her six-week-long hunger strike on Thursday morning, CBC News has learned.

The Assembly of First Nations, the NDP caucus, and the Liberal caucus have all signed a declaration from Spence. Interim Liberal Leader Bob Rae, who was in Sarnia Wednesday, will also signing the 13-point declaration.

Michèle Audette, president of the Canadian native women’s association, said there will be a press conference tomorrow morning.

Spence, who has been subsisting on fish broth and medicinal tea since Dec. 11, has been examining ways to return to her home and nurse herself back to health, multiple sources told The Canadian Press.

The northern Ontario First Nations community chief has been engaged in her protest for six weeks, camped on an island in the Ottawa River not far from Parliament Hill, in an effort to convince the country’s top leaders to take First Nations concerns seriously.

Rae brings with him a reputation as a firm but approachable and respectful mediator in tricky situations such as the Burnt Church aboriginal fishing dispute in 2000. Fiddler is from the same region as Spence and is known as a practical, sharp thinker. A delegation that includes Rae and Alvin Fiddler, northern Ontario deputy grand chief at Nishnawbe Aski Nation, has been working closely with Spence to hash out a dignified solution.

As well, a delegation from Attawapiskat is about to head to Ottawa to ask their chief to end her hunger strike. Attawapiskat’s acting chief, Christine Okimaw-Kataquapit, and an elder are leaving for Ottawa on Wednesday afternoon and plan to meet with Spence in the morning.

Kataquapit told CBC Radio she will present a letter signed by all band councillors in Attawapiskat.

The letter states that community members feel she has made her point and it’s time to come home. The letter also expresses concern for Spence’s health.

Declaration calls for many actions

Rae and Fiddler, along with Spence and a couple of her closest confidantes, have been working the phone lines to craft a declaration of the chief’s concerns that would be signed by supporters. They also hope to design a ceremony to mark what her protest has accomplished, and define a process that will allow Spence a recovery.

A draft copy of the declaration, obtained by CBC News, states that Spence and Robinson would continue their hunger strike unless they could be assured that commitments made by Prime Minister Stephen Harper on Jan. 11, in the meeting with national AFN Chief Shawn Atleo and other First Nations chiefs, are followed though and implemented as quickly as possible.

Earlier, Michelle Audet, President of the Quebec Native Women’s Association, told CBC that Spence wanted the NDP and the Liberal party to sign the declaration, as well as chiefs, and national native organizations

The declaration also asks for:

• An immediate meeting between the Crown, the federal and provincial governments, and all First Nations to discuss treaty and non-treaty-related relationships.
• Clear work plans and timelines, and a demand that the housing crisis within First Nations communities be considered as a short-term immediate action.
• Frameworks and mandates for implementation and enforcement of treaties on a nation-to-nation basis.
• Reforming and modifying a land-claims policy
• A commitment towards resource revenue sharing, requiring the participation of provinces and territories.
• A review of Bill C-38 and C-45 to ensure consistency with constitutional requirements about consultation with aboriginal peoples.
• Ensure that all federal legislation has the consent of First Nations where inherent and Treaty rights are affected
• The removal of funding caps and the indexing of payments made to First Nations.
• An inquiry into violence against indigenous women.
• Equity in capital construction of First Nation schools and additional funding support for First Nation languages.
• A dedicated cabinet committee and secretariat within the Privy Council Office responsible for the First Nation-Crown relationship.
• Full implementation of the United Nations declaration of the rights of indigenous peoples.

Push for another meeting with Harper, GG

Thursday is the the day Spence and the Assembly of First Nations had asked Harper and Gov. Gen. David Johnston to hold a broad meeting with the country’s chiefs, partly to commemorate the first anniversary of last year’s Crown-First Nation gathering, which was supposed to have reset relations between the two sides.

Harper and Johnston have not agreed to that meeting, but several chiefs are expected to come to Ottawa day anyway, Ontario Grand Chief Stan Beardy said earlier this week.

Speaking Wednesday from Cambridge, Ont., where he made an auto-industry announcement, Harper said that a date for a meeting has not been set. He stressed the need for aboriginal people to be able to participate in the economy.

“Those opportunities exist with resource development in remote areas with the shortage of labour the Canadian economy’s going to be experiencing and I want to see aboriginal people, particularly young aboriginal people, take full advantage of those opportunities,” Harper said.

Opposition Leader Thomas Mulcair, speaking from Baie-Saint-Paul, Quebec, said Wednesday that he plans to work with the AFN and Atleo.

“We continue to hope that as discussions move on we can see rather rapidly an end to the hunger strikes because we’re worried about people’s health,” he said.

Mulcair has not visited with Spence since she began her hunger strike, but he noted that about 20 NDP MPs had met personally with her.

There’s a growing list of politicians and First Nations leaders anxious to see Spence end her protest. They have been careful, however, to leave the final decision up to her.

Instead, they are telling Spence how they count her victories: Greater national awareness of First Nations issues; a meeting between the AFN, Harper and several cabinet ministers; and a commitment to modernize treaties and aboriginal rights, with negotiations between chiefs and the top levels of government.

They also say Spence’s resolve helped galvanize thousands of protesters across the country under the Idle No More banner.

Spence protest put spotlight on band’s finances

Spence’s protest attracted unwanted attention, too: Much publicity surrounded a government-ordered audit of her band’s finances that showed a lack of proper documentation for about $100 million in funding.

Rae, the Assembly of First Nations, Spence’s spokesman and Fiddler would not comment Tuesday when contacted by The Canadian Press.

Women chiefs have been instrumental in keeping Spence’s spirits up, say insiders.

Indeed, a group of Manitoba women chiefs has just wrapped up a visit to Spence, and has issued a call for female chiefs to come to Ottawa on Thursday to support the Cree leader.

“We share Chief Spence’s deep concern for the future of our nations and echo Chief Spence’s call for restoring our relationship with the Crown to reflect the original spirit and intent of the treaties,” said a statement from Chief Betsy Kennedy of War Lake First Nation.

Atleo due to return to duties

While Spence’s protest may be forging a bond among First Nations women leaders, her refusal to budge over the past few weeks has divided the Assembly of First Nations and prompted questions about the leadership of Atleo.

Atleo attended the meeting with Harper on Jan. 11 even though the Governor General was not included in the meeting, as Spence had demanded. She boycotted the meeting, as did many chiefs from Manitoba, Ontario and other parts of the country.

Atleo has been on sick leave ever since, but issued a statement on Monday saying he would be back at work with a united AFN later this week.

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