OCCUPIED JERUSALEM: A Palestinian human rights group slammed Israeli treatment of Palestinian female prisoners in a UN-sponsored report released on Wednesday, saying pregnant women are often shackled on their way to hospitals to give birth. The women prisoners are held in “Israeli prisons and detention centers which were designed for men and do not respond to female needs,” according to a report by the Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association, which was sponsored by the United Nations Development Fund for Women.
Pregnant detainees “do not enjoy preferential treatment in terms of diet, living space or transfer to hospitals,” it said. “Pregnant prisoners are also chained to their beds until they enter delivery rooms and shackled once again after giving birth.
“The unbalanced diet, insufficient amounts of protein-rich foods, lack of natural sunlight and movement, poor ventilation and moisture all contribute to the exacerbation and the development of health problems such as skin diseases, anemia, asthma, prolonged stomach aches, joint and back pains.”
In addition, the majority of the prisoners were “subjected to some form of mental pressure and torture through the process of their arrest,” including beatings, insults, threats, sexual harassment and humiliation techniques.
The vast majority of Palestinian women in Israeli prisons are young – some 13 percent of those arrested in 2007-08 were under the age of 18 and 56 percent were between 20 and 30 years of age.
The detainees are often denied means to study, which violates their rights to a higher education and suffer from restrictions on visits.
In September 2008, some 60 percent had at least one family member who was not allowed to visit them. Open visits were restricted to mothers once their children reached the age of six.
Female prisoners with a husband or other relatives also in jail were “accorded the right to family visits after months of delays.”
In addition, the Israeli prison authorities do not provide gender-sensitive rehabilitation programs, it said.
The report was based on interviews with 125 Palestinian women who were detained or imprisoned in Israeli jails between November 2007 and November 2008. Of those, some 65 remain in prison – part of some 9,000 Palestinians currently incarcerated in Israel. – AFP
Abbas’ government suspends Al-Jazeera in West Bank for ‘incitement, unbalanced reporting’
Ben Hubbard
Associated Press
OCCUPIED RAMALLAH: The Palestinian government on Wednesday suspended operations of the Al-Jazeera news channel in the Occupied West Bank a day after a guest on the station accused the Palestinian president of playing a role in Yasser Arafat’s death.
The guest, Farouk Kaddoumi, said on a talk show Tuesday – without presenting any evidence – that President Mahmoud Abbas had played a role in the 2004 death of Arafat, the revered founder of the Palestinian national movement.
Kaddoumi, a high-ranking, Tunis-based official in the Palestine Liberation Organization, is a longtime Abbas rival.
In a statement announcing the suspension, the Information Ministry did not mention Kaddoumi’s comments, only accusing the popular Arab satellite TV station of incitement and unbalanced reporting from the Palestinian territories.
The statement added that the ministry took particular issue with an Al-Jazeera broadcast on Tuesday, without elaborating.
The ministry is suing Al-Jazeera, and the station’s operations are suspended until the court has ruled.
The station’s employees in Ramallah were seen piling files into black garbage bags and carrying them out with cameras, computers and other equipment before Palestinian security officials arrived to close the office.
The closure affected both the English and Arabic services of the channel.
Walid al-Omary, Al-Jazeera’s bureau chief in Occupied Jerusalem, denied the accusations.
“We are sorry about this decision, which we consider a violation of freedom of expression and freedom of the press in this country,” he said.
Al-Jazeera’s Qatar headquarters issued a statement saying the station “has maintained strict, professional journalistic standards … [the] Palestinian Authority’s reaction reflects a repression of the freedom of media and a refusal to allow other opinions.”
Abbas’ aides have long alleged that the Qatar-based station, widely watched in the Palestinian territories, has been siding with the Islamic Hamas movement in the bitter Palestinian power struggle.
In Gaza, Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum accused the West Bank government of trying to silence the media and “cover up what is going on in the West Bank,” a reference to Abbas’ crackdown.
In Gaza, Hamas has carried out similar arrest raids and shut down Abbas-linked media outlets.
The Foreign Press Association, which represents international media operating in Israel and the Palestinian territories, said it was “deeply concerned” about the closure. It urged the Palestinian Authority to resolve the issue and uphold freedom of the press.