Dozen countries to hold sit-ins in support of Palestinian inmates

People in at least a dozen countries are going to stage sit-ins in solidarity with Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails across the occupied territories.

Qadura Fares, the head of the Palestinian Prisoners’ Society (PPS), on Monday listed the states as Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, France, Japan, Mexico, South Africa, Spain and the United States, explaining that the protests would take place on Tuesday on the occasion of the International Political Prisoners’ Day.

Fares added that the sit-ins are organized by the PPS and the Palestinian NGO Human Rights Defenders in coordination with local authorities in the respective countries.

Also on Monday, Israeli authorities had to release Palestinian prisoner Bilal Kayid, who had been on hunger strike for 71 days to protest his so-called administrative detention. The 35-year-old Kayid, a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), had been arrested in 2002 and spent 14 and a half years in Israeli jails.

On the day he was originally scheduled to be released on June 13, the Tel Aviv regime decided to extend his imprisonment term for another six months under the so-called administrative detention policy, which allows detainees to be held without trial for renewable six-month periods. He went on hunger strike as a result.

There are reportedly more than 6,500 Palestinians held at Israeli jails. Hundreds of the inmates have apparently been incarcerated under the practice of “administrative detention.”

Some Palestinian prisoners have been held in such detention for up to eleven years.

The Palestinian inmates regularly hold hunger strikes in protest at the “administrative detention” policy and their harsh prison conditions.