Free Khader Adnan Week of Action Feb. 19 - 26
US Palestinian Community Network
www.uspcn.org + uspcn@uspcn.org + Twitter
USPCN
Week of Action: February 19-26, 2012
If you are in New York City, there will be a picket line on
Monday, Feb. 20, from 4:30 to 7:30
outside the Israeli mission to the United Nations
at 42 Street and Second Avenue.
Khader Adnan has been on hunger strike for 63 days – one day for each
year of the occupation of Palestine; one day, one year, of steadfastness,
resilience, resistance, and dignity in the face of occupation and oppression.
His courage and commitment must inspire us all to act to amplify his message,
support his action, demand his freedom – and the freedom of
Palestine.
“I hereby assert that I am confronting the occupiers not
for my own sake as an individual, but for the sake of thousands of prisoners
who are being deprived of their simplest human rights while the world and
international community look on…It is time the international community
and the UN support prisoners and force the State of Israel to respect
international human rights and stop treating prisoners as if they were not
humans.”
– Khader Adnan, from his hospital
bed
BACKGROUND
Khader Adnan was abducted by Israeli occupation soldiers on December 17,
2011 at 3:30 am.
Addameer reports:
“Before entering his house, soldiers used the driver that takes
Khader’s father to the vegetable market, Mohammad Mustafa, as a human
shield by forcing him to knock on the door of the house and call out
Khader’s name while blindfolded. A huge force of soldiers then entered
the house shouting. Recognizing Khader immediately, they grabbed him violently
in front of his two young daughters and ailing mother.”
He was then taken to interrogation, where interrogators forced him into
stress positions, ripped out chunks of his beard and rubbed his face with dirt
as they insulted his wife, sister, children and mother. Throughout this ordeal,
he refused to say a word to his interrogators or take a bite of food. He was
never charged with any crime, but instead placed in administrative detention, a
mechanism in which Palestinian prisoners are held for months at a time,
renewable again and again, without charge or trial, on the basis of secret
evidence.
Since then, Khader Adnan has been on hunger strike for 63 days. Past 50
days, a hunger striker is in immediate danger of organ failure and death. He
has lost eighty pounds, cannot walk, and remains shackled hand and foot to his
hospital bed. And still he insists upon his strike, upon his
humanity and dignity in the face of a system that would obliterate
it.
ACTION
While the Western media has been almost entirely silent about the case of
Khader Adnan, he has become an international symbol of resistance to injustice
through grassroots movements and social media. Amnesty International, Human
Rights Watch, and the Carter Center have joined the call for his release.
Khader Adnan is demanding not only his release but the end of administrative
detention. He is one of 307 administrative detainees and nearly 4500
Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails. 40% of Palestinian men in the West Bank
and Gaza have spent time in the occupation’s jails. Palestinian prisoners
have long utilized the hunger strike as a mechanism of struggle, and Khader
Adnan is the latest – and longest-term – inheritor of that great
and heroic tradition of the Palestinian prisoners’ movement. The
Palestinian prisoners have always been the conscience of the Palestinian
national liberation movement, and Khader Adnan’s steadfastness is the
emblematic example of that role.Khader’s struggle and sacrifice
calls us home to the fundamentals of the struggle, to the freedom of our people
and our land, the return of our refugees, to opening the gates of the
occupier’s prisons, and must call us now to action.
Protests have taken place in many cities in the past weeks and thousands of
letters have been written. At this critical time, the next week
– Feb. 19-26 must be a week of action for Khader Adnan and all
Palestinian prisoners. On Mon., Feb, 20, join AMP, USPCN and others in a national day of
fasting for Khader Adnan. Hundreds have already joined a
“Fasting for Freedom” campaign and protests are planned
in New York, Oakland, Los Angeles and elsewhwere. We
call on all USPCN chapters and members, the Palestinian community, and the
supporters and friends of the Palestinian people to:
1. Join and organize such actions at Israeli embassies and
consulates, in public squares, on campuses, and in communities. Join in the
solidarity hunger strikes and Fasts for Freedom. Please email us
at uspcn@uspcn.org or send us the Facebook link to your
events.
2. Organize call-in centers and hunger strike events to bring
together solidarity fasters and people calling the State Department.
Please email us at uspcn@uspcn.org or send us the Facebook link and we will
publicize your call-in centers.
3. Continue the Social Media and Twitter campaigns to publicize the
case of Khader Adnan. The twitter hashtag
#HungerStrike63Days trended worldwide today – when the mainstream media
is silent, we must speak in our own voices.
4. Continue the phone-call and letter pressure. Call the
office of Jeffrey Feltman, Assistant Secretary of State for Near East Affairs
at 202.647.7209 and insist the US take a stand and demand that
Israel release Khader Adnan and end the practice of administrative detention.
Write letters to the occupation authority to make it clear that thousands
around the world are with Khader Adnan: http://samidoun.ca/2012/02/take-action-for-hunger-striking-palestinian-prisoner-khader-adnan/ and
sign the petition to the International Committee of the Red
Cross: http://signon.org/sign/khader-adnans-life-at-1?source=c.fwd&r_by=2447156
