Raafat Hamdouna, director of the Prisoners Studies Center, said today, Monday, that the Israeli occupation authorities are almost the only ones in the world that keep prisoners in their prisons despite repeated calls from international human rights organizations to release Palestinian prisoners from prisons in light of concerns. The large number of corona virus outbreaks in places of detention is due to overcrowding and poor health facilities worldwide.
Hamdouna pointed out in a press statement to him that most of the countries of the world released the prisoners in their prisons, at the instigation of Amnesty International and human rights organizations, in order to protect the prisoners from the spread of infection, due to the danger and prison workers complaining about the loss of means of protection, in light of the health emergency that Governments and systems are empowered to take measures they deem appropriate to combat the epidemic and the exceptional risks posed by a lack of hygiene in the cells, overcrowded corridors, and infection of inmates in contact with the injured in society.
And that the occupation authorities exceed the health principles recommended by the International Committee of the Red Cross, which was taken according to a vision and project of the World Health Organization not to preserve the individual when there are harmful effects on his health, which were granted to him by international treaties and covenants, such as the right to health care, and protection from infectious and dangerous diseases such as a virus HIV, the right to the highest possible standard of health and care for prisoners, non-discrimination, privacy and confidentiality.
Hamdouna stressed that the occupation authorities do not preserve and transcend those principles, as they recommended the release of criminal prisoners, especially Jews, and did not release a single Palestinian prisoner, or even a detainee under the name of administrative detention without an indictment and a secret file, or a prisoner of eighty years of age, or even A cancer patient, despite the real risks of transmitting the infection from the prisoners who come into contact with the infected community from outside the prisons.
The director of the Prisoners Studies Center called on international institutions to pressure the occupation authorities to release Palestinian prisoners and detainees in Israeli prisons in anticipation of infection due to the spread of the virus in Israel, and for the presence of hundreds of prisoners who are sick with chronic diseases and dozens of elderly people, required to provide preventive and health mechanisms and enhance public and health services , And take preventive measures to reduce the spread of infection.
