The Palestine Center for Prisoner Studies said today, Tuesday, that the number of child prisoners in the occupation prisons increased by 35 percent, compared to the beginning of this year, reaching 235 children, as a result of the intensive arrests targeting children. Palestinians in the last two months.
In its report, the Center stated that the occupation intensified during the months of May and June of arrests against Palestinians and reached new areas such as villages and towns of the occupied territories in the year 1948, and children were not excluded from these arrests, as their percentage reached 19 percent of the total arrests in the occupied territories during the first half of this year.
The director of the center, Riad Al-Ashkar, said that the occupation continues the policy of targeting children, by arresting, summoning and imposing harsh sentences in addition to exorbitant financial fines, as the cases of arrests among minors during the first half of the year reached (880) cases under the age of eighteen, including (43) children. Under 12 years old, some as young as 10 years old.
Al-Ashqar indicated that the occupation is deliberately intensifying the resort to arresting children in order to intimidate them, waste their future and deprive them of education, and to practice a policy of deterrence against them, to prevent them from participating in any activities, protests or acts of resistance against the occupation in the future.
He pointed out that the child prisoners are distributed among the lions sections in the prisons (Megiddo, Ofer and Damoun), in addition to the presence of a number in detention and investigation centers, who suffer from very harsh detention conditions and deteriorating and inhuman conditions that lack the most basic necessities of life.
He pointed out that the worst detention centers in which children are held (Al-Maskobiya, Al-Jalameh and Hawara), where they are subjected to fierce attack, are deprived of their basic rights, and all forms of abuse and humiliation are practiced against them. Some of them were arrested in their pajamas, as well as from the lack of hygiene and the lack of healthy drinking water, which forces them to drink from unfit water, in addition to the harsh treatment of the warders.
The detention centers in which children are held lack adequate heating, blankets, hot water in the winter, or fans and coolers in the summer. The food provided to prisoners is poor in quantity and quality, and sometimes prisoners find insects inside, in addition to the hostile and provocative treatment of the warders, where they beat the cubs And insulting and insulting, as Al-Ashqar said.
He added, “Although international human rights conventions, specifically the Convention on the Rights of the Child, stressed the need to provide protection for children, and called for not to use torture against them, the occupation authorities made torture and arrest of Palestinian children the first resort, and subjected them to various types of torture and cruel and degrading treatment, From beatings, ghosts, deprivation of sleep and food, threats and insults.”
The director of the Palestine Center for Prisoner Studies said, “The occupation carries out grave violations against child prisoners, from the first moment of their arrest, including: arresting them from their homes in the late hours of the night, transferring them to interrogation and detention centers, and keeping them without food or drink for long hours, which in some cases reached For two days, insults and obscene words were directed at them, threatened and intimidated, confessions were extracted from them under pressure and threats, and forced to sign statements written in Hebrew without knowing their content, and deprived them of their legal right to the presence of a parent and a lawyer during the investigation, and other methods and violations.
Al-Ashqar added, “The occupation insists on disregarding all human rights principles and values ​​sanctioned by international conventions to protect the rights of minor prisoners, by continuing torture and abuse against Palestinian child prisoners, through arrest and investigation, which are revealed daily by children’s testimonies to lawyers about their being subjected to torture, humiliation and cruel treatment. during their arrest and interrogation.
The Palestine Center called on international institutions, especially those concerned with children´s affairs, to intervene and use all available means to release all Palestinian children detained by the occupation, and to stop the ongoing arrests and violations against them.
