RAMALLAH, May 14, 2012 (WAFA) – A rights group Monday set up a life-size Israeli prison cell in Ramallah, mimicking real cells many Palestinian prisoners are currently held in while finishing their fourth week of a mass open-ended hunger strike.
Head of Palestine Deserves group Ayman Sbeih said in a press release that the Freedom Cell aims to attract global attention to the prisoners, who have been hunger striking for over two months.
He said that the two-by-two meters blue cell simulates a real life cell, in which Palestinian prisoners suffer from the inhuman measures deliberately practiced by the Israeli prisons’ administration to torture them.
An elderly father of one of the Palestinian striking prisoners stood inside the cell representing striking prisoners and was freed later on, suggesting that all prisoners will be freed one day.
Sbeih said that any initiative at this point has a huge impact on the prisoners’ steadfastness and persistence to end the administrative detention and isolation policy, and to achieve their demands.
Blank paper was distributed among those who attended the set-up of the Freedom Cell to write supportive letters for the prisoners in order to be delivered to them later and published through rights organizations.
Around 2000 Palestinian prisoners went on an open-ended hunger strike on April 17th protesting administrative detention and demanding better living conditions in Israeli jails.
M.H.