Solidarity with Palestinian hunger striker Khader Adnan

From the PFLP site (February 11):

The broadest solidarity campaign and mass movement in solidarity with imprisoned leader Khader Adnan, is needed as he enters his fifty-fifth day of hunger strike, said Comrade Nasrallah Jarghoun, a student leader with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine in Khan Younis.

Jarghoun spoke during a rally in Khan Younis outside the International Committee of the Red Cross office on Thursday, emphasizing the need to raise the level of attention on the prisoners’ cause in the Palestinian and Arab movement, saying that this cause must not be seasonal but permanent until the prisoners win their freedom, an essential part of the rights and freedom of Palestinian land and people.

The protest was widely attended by a wide variety of groups in the area, emphasizing the need to mobilize around the issue of political prisoners and prisoners of war, and to raise this issue at an international level in all international forums. He saluted the Palestinian lawyers boycotting Israeli military courts in solidarity with Khader Adnan, and called for a national vision and plan to advance the prisoners’ cause.

Jarghoun spoke about Khader Adnan’s ongoing hunger-strike, entering its fifty-fifth day. He described Adnan’s struggle as an epic battle, placing flesh and blood on the line in a battle for human dignity in the face of the occupation’s massive structures of oppression, represented by the Shin Bet and their torture, the Israel Prison Services and their abuses, and the arrogant racism that underlies their aggressive policies, attempting to break the will of the Palestinian people. Khader Adnan’s steadfastness and courage, said Jarghoun, is a brilliant example of the failure of torture and oppression to break the spirit of Palestinian resistance.

He denounced official international silence and particularly that of the Red Cross, noting that such silence is complicity as the suffering of prisoners worsens daily inside the occupation’s prisons.

Ahmed al-Mudellal of Islamic Jihad spoke about Khader Adnan, saying that his health is deteriorating daily and the occupation has full responsibility for his life and health. He called upon all Palestinian parties and institutions to expand their work in solidarity with the prisoners’ movement. He noted the strong role of the Popular Front in supporting the prisoners’ movement and calling for protests in solidarity with Sheikh Khader Adnan, and saluted the Palestinian national leaders in occupation prisons – Comrade Ahmad Sa’adat, General Secretary of the PFLP; Marwan Barghouti; Aziz Dweik; and all of Palestine’s prisoners of freedom.

Comrade Rami Abu Saud, a freed prisoner, spoke about the need to continue the popular actions and sit-ins taking place to put pressure on international institutions to focus on the prisoners’ cause. He said that Khader Adnan is a true hero and a model of steadfastness and sacrifice, as is Comrade Ahmad Sa’adat, who with his fellow isolated prisoners have firmly stood for dignity for all while engaged in “battles of the empty stomachs.”

The protest raised slogans condemning the occupation’s racist policies toward prisoners, and sent a letter to the Director of the ICRC in the province, urging action on the struggle of Palestinian prisoners and particularly Khader Adnan.

Hunger strikes and protests continued in solidarity with Khader Adnan as his hunger strike reaches into its 56th day, with protests in Haifa, Jerusalem, Ramallah, Bethlehem, Jenin and Gaza. Adnan has been on hunger strike since December 17, 2011, when he was abducted by the occupation military. He has been held under administrative detention on secret evidence without charge since that time, and was subjected to torture and abuse in interrogation. In protest, Adnan has refused to speak or eat since that time, and he has become a symbol of Palestinian prisoners’ steadfastness and resistance even as his life is in serious danger.

Further reading: For a campaign of solidarity with the Palestinian struggle