Karapatan Alliance for the Advancement of People’s Rights – Philippines strongly condemns the atrocious practices and treatment of the Israeli occupation entity to Palestininan political prisoners. We particularly call for the immediate release of prisoner Mohammed al Qeeq, a journalist on hunger strike for 85 days now. He has lost his eyesight and hearing, and is reported to be close to death in the hospital bed of HaEmek in Afula.
Photo credits: Samidoun Political Prisoners Network; PinoyWeekly
Karapatan Alliance for the Advancement of People’s Rights – Philippines strongly condemns the atrocious practices and treatment of the Israeli occupation entity to Palestininan political prisoners. We particularly call for the immediate release of prisoner Mohammed al Qeeq, a journalist on hunger strike for 85 days now. He has lost his eyesight and hearing, and is reported to be close to death in the hospital bed of HaEmek in Afula.
Photo credits: Samidoun Political Prisoners Network; PinoyWeekly
Alqeeq is among the more than 7,000 Palestinian political prisoners in Israeli prisons and detention centers, including women and children.
Al Qeeq, 33, married and father of two, worked as a journalist in the TV Station Al Maj’d in Ramallah. He was arrested by Israeli occupation forces who raided his home in Ramallah on the morning of November 25, 2015. He was taken shackled and blindfolded, and left in open air for 20 hours. He was interrogated for several hours a day shackled to a chair with his hands tied behind his back.
Al Qeeq was placed on “administrative detention” for six months, an application of a law that detains a person without charge or trial. Time and again, sham Israeli military courts convene only to renew the detention periods with the pretext that charges are classified files. Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association statistics page showed Palestininian 343 administrative detainees as of September 15, 2015.
Al Qeeq, a student activist at the Birzeit University then, had been detained thrice. Journalists, like him, are targetted and suppressed because they report on the atrocities of the Zionist Israeli government. Seventeen journalists are in detention in the Israeli occupied territory in Palestine.
Al Qeeq went on hunger strike to protest the practice of administrative detention and the ferocious torture and difficult conditions faced by political prisoners in Palestine. In the hospital, al Qeeq suffered another form of torture. In an attempt to keep him alive, he was forced against his will to infusion of salts and vitamins. He was tied to his bed and prison wardens held him down. But while they persist on keeping him alive to end his hunger strike, the request to transfer him to the Ramallah hospital in the West Bank and be attended to by independent doctors was denied. The Israeli Supreme Court also delayed hearing his case despite the claim that he is no longer under administrative detention.
Political prisoners in the Philippines suffer the same kind of suppression and inhumanity inside prisons. On January 2015, during the visit of Pope Francis, the Aquino administration and jail authorities denied requests of independent doctors to attend to the medical condition of political prisoners on hunger strike in Camp Bagong Diwa, Taguig City. Human rights organizations, relatives of political prisoners and lawyers were also disallowed access, in an attempt to hide the situation of political prisoners in the Philippines and mute the demand for their immediate release.
In January this year, Eduardo Serrano, a peace consultant of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines, passed away due to cardiac arrest. Serrano, 62, was detained for 11 long years for trumped up criminal charges. In 2004, Serrano was abducted and tortured by members of the Philippine military. He was eventually surfaced, after persistent demands of his family and human rights organizations, and charged with fabricated cases and detained. Last year, three out of five criminal cases against him were dismissed by local courts.
As of December 2015, there are 557 political prisoners in the Philippines, more than 300 of them arrested under the US-Aquino regime. Eighty-eight (88) of them have ailments, including Wilma Austria Tiamzon who has been under close watch of her doctors because of her carotid artery oclusion and cervical spondylolisthesis.
Both the Zionist Israel occupation entity and the Philippine puppet regimes are backed, trained and funded by the US government in their wars of aggressions against the Palestinian and Filipino people. This kind of imperialist/state terrorism engenders the numerous atrocities and violations on peoples’ rights, including political killings, illegal arrest, torture, and detention, among others.
Mohammed al Qeeq is determined to continue his hunger strike, a choice between death and freedom. We opt for al Qeeq’s life and his freedom. We call for the immediate and unconditional release of Mohammed al Qeeq, and all Palestinian and Filipino political prisoners.