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Profile: Palestinian Prisoners in Israeli Jails Continue a Hunger Strike to Protest The Treatment of Prisoners, Especially Children
All Things Considered: August 30, 2004
Israel's Prisoners Maintain Hunger Strike
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Melissa Block.
Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails resumed a hunger strike today after a weekend break. It's now in its second week. Inmates are appealing to international organizations to end what they call very difficult conditions. Among their demands, prisoners want more family visits and an end to strip searches. Israeli officials insist prison conditions are humane and deny any mistreatment. Monitoring groups, meanwhile, are especially concerned about treatment of jailed Palestinian children. NPR's Julie McCarthy reports on the hunger strike and what lies behind it.
JULIE McCARTHY reporting:
Israel insists that in no case has it jeopardized its prisoners, who it insists on calling terrorists, or their strike. That, however, has not quieted the daily demonstrations in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, or the protests of a broad array of human rights campaigners, Arab and Israeli. Before a recent rally in Ramallah, Mahatma Gandhi's grandson Arun Gandhi proclaimed the virtues of passive resistance to change conditions inside the prisons.
Mr. ARUN GANDHI (Grandson of Mahatma Gandhi): The way of my grandfather and my own way is non-violence. And take this from a friend: Non-violence works.
McCARTHY: But emulating civil disobedience of the kind that helped force Britain out of India is a distinctly uphill proposition for Palestinians, especially the young, who are raised amid violence. For many of them, serving time in prison is a rite of passage in much the same way serving in the army is for young Israelis.
Seventeen-year-old Saousan Abu-Turki(ph) limps into the reception room of her family's home in the West Bank town of Hebron, where tensions between Palestinian residents and Jewish settlers keep the city on constant edge. Saousan was 14, a ninth-grader, when she decided to march up to an Israeli checkpoint and stab a soldier. The girl twists a Kleenex in her hand as she describes how she failed, fled and was chased down by Israeli troops, who she said badly beat her. Saousan said she was then taken to an Israeli detention center and interrogated by what she described as four large men who wore tattoos and nose rings.
SAOUSAN ABU-TURKI (Hebron Resident): (Through Translator) I was scared. I was so frightened. I became like a lump of ice. They made me sit in the middle of the room, and each one of them sat in a corner. They started asking me questions, and whenever my answer did not please them, one of them would come from the back and hit me.
McCARTHY: Saousan says later she was forced to sign a statement saying that she had not been beaten during the interrogation. For nearly three weeks, she says, she was forced to spend part of each day in solitary confinement. The head of the detention center asked her why she wanted to attack Israelis. `To avenge the killing of a friend,' she answered, `and the shelling of my school and the arrest of my uncles.' She said her stoicism unnerved her jailer.
ABU-TURKI: (Through Translator) He said then, `Saousan, I still ask you, why don't you cry? Don't you miss your family?' I answered, `I miss them very much, and I need them very much, but I don't cry in front of you. I used to cry a lot alone. I used to suffer a lot alone.'
McCARTHY: Saousan says she did not see her family until her trial weeks later. Family visits top the list of demands hunger-striking prisoners are pressing, along with an end to aggressive interrogations. Save the Children Sweden reports that many children detainees are subjected to what it calls cruel methods of interrogation. Saousan says she was shackled in the position of a cross with chains that cut into her wrists and ankles. The diminutive teen, who has testified before a special UN committee, says she still suffers from injuries inflicted during her imprisonment. Saousan attributes her limp to beatings and shackling. An Israeli Prison Service spokesman categorically denies that Saousan was mistreated.
Child advocacy groups estimate that since the start of the four-year-old intifada, more than 2,000 Palestinian children ages 12 to 18 have been arrested. The organizations report that a number of the 350 youngsters currently in Israeli jails have joined adult inmates in refusing to eat. It is a tactic Saousan Abu-Turki says she tried when she was in prison, only to discover what she got for it was just one more beating. Julie McCarthy, NPR News.
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