Activists attend online rally for Palestinian Prisoner Day

Activists have attended an online rally for Palestinian Prisoner Day this year to demand freedom for Palestinian detainees amid the new coronavirus pandemic.

On Friday, more than 600 people took part in a webinar held by the Jewish Voice for Peace to commemorate Palestinian prisoners. The participants tuned in to hear activists and experts "From Rikers Island to Palestine" speaking about Israeli jails and calling for the release of Palestinian prisoners in the wake of rising cases of infection with the coronavirus in the occupied territories.

The event was interactive, and participants were encouraged to make protest signs to post on Twitter with the hashtag #PalestinianPrisonersDay. 

Activists were seen on the video feed holding phones to their ears and making calls to legislators, demanding prisoners be released during the pandemic.

"Today when we talk about Palestinian prisoners, we're talking about a global struggle against mass incarceration. Right now, we are in a moment where nation-states, particularly Israel and the United States, but many others, are using the prison to resolve all of our social contradictions," Marc Lamont Hill, a well-known professor and activist said at Friday’s event.

"Poverty, mental illness, drug addiction, political dissent, occupation - all of these things are resolved at the level of imprisonment," he said. 

UN chief calls for protection of Palestinian prisoners amid coronavirus pandemic

The UN chief calls for the protection of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails amid the novel coronavirus pandemic.

Around 5,000 Palestinians, including women and children, are currently held in Israeli prisons. At least 432 prisoners have not been charged and are being held without trial, indefinitely, under Israel's "administrative detention" mechanism. 

"These are people... who have not been convicted of a crime - we're not sure if they've done anything [criminal] even in the eyes of the state - and yet they're still sitting in prison," during a pandemic, Hill said.

Hanan Ashrawi, a Palestinian lawmaker said at least 700 of the Palestinians confined in Israeli jails suffer from chronic illnesses and other underlying health conditions that make them especially vulnerable during the coronavirus pandemic.

He also said Israeli forces have detained a further 357 Palestinians across the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem al-Quds, including 48 children, since the outbreak of the pandemic.

The new coronavirus, which causes a respiratory disease known as COVID-19, first emerged in the Chinese city of Wuhan late last year, incrementally affecting the rest of the world.

The virus has so far infected over 2,250,000 people worldwide, and over 154,000 have died, according to a running count by worldometers.info.

Israel says the new coronavirus has so far infected 12,982 people and killed 151 others.

Palestinians are concerned about the prisoners’ health, saying the international community must do whatever it can to prevent an outbreak in Israeli jails.

Rights groups say Palestinian prisoners are systemically subjected to torture and ill treatment. They have warned about a rapid spread of the coronavirus among prisoners while Israel fails to take any concrete measures to protect the prisoners.

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