Human rights group pushes action to free imprisoned Palestinian children

Al-Awda Action Alert:

Free the Children of Palestine!According to Israeli police, 1200 Palestinian children have been arrested, interrogated and imprisoned in the occupied city of Jerusalem alone this year. The youngest of these children was seven-years old.

Children and teenagers were often dragged out of their beds in the middle of the night, taken in handcuffs for questioning, threatened, humiliated and many were subjected to physical violence while under arrest as part of an ongoing campaign against the children of Palestine. Since the year 2000, more than 8000 have been arrested by Israel, and reports of mistreatment are commonplace.

Further, based on sworn affidavits collected in 2009 from 100 of these children, lawyers working in the occupied West Bank found that 69% were beaten and kicked, 49% were threatened, 14% were held in solitary confinement, 12% were threatened with sexual assault, including rape, and 32% were forced to sign confessions written in Hebrew, a language they do not understand. Minors were often asked to give names and incriminate friends and relatives as a condition of their release.

Such institutionalized and systematic mistreatment of Palestinian children by the state of Israel is a violation international law and specifically contravenes the Convention on the Rights of the Child to which Israel is supposedly a signatory.

ACTION

Al-Awda, the Palestine Right to Return Coalition calls on its members, supporters and all people of conscience to please take a moment to read and sign our petition at: http://www.gopetition.com/petition/41467/sign.html

Please ask your friends and contacts to do the same.

The petition demands that President Barak Obama direct Israel to release all Palestinian children detained in its prisons and detention centers immediately, and to end all forms of systematic and institutionalized abuse that it practices against the children of Palestine. What the Israeli state is doing to Palestinian children amounts to psychological terrorism. No person of conscience can live with this stain on their lives.

Until Return,

Al-Awda, The Palestine Right to Return Coalition