The Palestinian Prisoners Club said that the Israeli occupation authorities have arrested more than 3,300 Palestinian prisoners, since the outbreak of the Corona virus began last March. Nadis Asir said in a statement, today, Wednesday, that the arrest campaigns included children and women, the elderly, the sick and the wounded. The "Prisoners Club" stressed that the occupation has turned the epidemic into a tool of suppression and violence against prisoners, and despite the increasing registration of injuries among their ranks, especially last November, it continued the systematic daily arrests, which were accompanied by violence, repression and intimidation against the detainees and their families. The highest rate of arrests was in June The "Prisoners Club" stated that the highest rate of arrests was last June, when the number of arrests reached 469, pointing out that since last April, nearly 140 cases of Corona virus were recorded among the ranks of the prisoners, according to what was announced. And following up on the concerned institutions, as other cases may not have been announced, especially since the prison structure is a catalytic environment for the spread of the epidemic, not to mention the Prison Authority’s monopoly on its narrative. Attorneys´ visits to prisoners escalated, which was stopped for a period with the beginning of the spread of the epidemic, and then they were resumed within specific restrictions, which placed the prisoners in double isolation, which posed a double danger to their fate, as there are still great fears of the possibility of the epidemic spreading among their ranks more broadly, Especially after what the Gilboa prison witnessed last November. The "Prisoners Club" stressed the need for serious pressure on the interest of the occupation prisons, by the competent authorities and international human rights institutions, especially the International Red Cross, in order to allow the provision of telephone calls to the prisoners with their families. Bitter reality The "Prisoners Club" has reviewed a number of facts, which it has monitored over the past months regarding the reality of prisoners in the Israeli occupation prisons with the spread of the epidemic, including: The procrastination in providing the necessary preventive measures in the prisoners´ sections such as cleaning and sterilization materials, and the detention of dozens of new detainees Detention centers that do not meet the minimum conditions for human life, as happened in the centers of "Hawara and Etzion", where they isolated detainees for periods of more than 20 days in tragic and inhuman conditions under the name of "quarantine", and continued to practice a policy of medical negligence against them, and placed them in isolation Multiplier, among its measures linked to the epidemic; And it prevented them from communicating with their families after their visits were suspended for a while, as well as preventing them from meeting lawyers. After the resumption of visits, the Occupation Prisons Authority continued to obstruct communication between the prisoners, their families and their lawyers on the other hand, citing the epidemic.
