Haringey Justice for Palestinians is calling a public meeting to launch our campaign to highlight the plight of Palestinian children in Israeli jails. We are adding our voices to the international outcry against the unjust and obscene Israeli policy of incarcerating Palestinian children, in violation of all international human rights agreements, including the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Most of these children are accused of stone throwing, yet they are arrested in the middle of the night, handcuffed, shackled, held without charge for up to six months, and given draconian sentences when convicted. Throughout the whole ‘legal’ process, they are separated from their parents and held in terrifying, humiliating and violent conditions, sometimes in solitary confinement. Many of them are under the age of twelve.
The Palestinian Solidarity Campaign is already organising activity on this issue nationally; our local campaign will be part of a country-wide protest. HFJP belongs to the National Twinning Network; we are twinned with Aizeria (Bethany) on the West Bank in East Jerusalem, and have hosted several visitors from there. We hope this meeting will help to bring home to people in Haringey the sort of issues Palestinian families, such as those in Aizeria, have to face on a daily basis.
We are lucky to have Victoria Brittain (author of Death of Dignity) and Adah Kay (co-author of Stolen Youth) as guest speakers at our meeting. Kiri Tunks (PSC) will bring us up to speed with the national campaign. We will also be showing film clips from Stolen Youth. There will be plenty of time afterwards to discuss the issues and plan practical ways in which we can take the campaign forward.
This issue deserves the attention of the whole community. Young people, with their passionate concern for human rights, may be particularly interested, so please invite young people, teachers and youth workers, and bring friends and family. Attached is an A5 e-flyer and an A4 poster. Please help us by printing them out and displaying them. If you can, send them electronically to friends, colleagues, teachers, churches, mosques, synagogues, community centres, youth clubs etc. Everyone can be involved in this campaign in some way. So we urge you to put the date in your diary: with your support we can make the meeting big enough to build the campaign across Haringey and start making waves. Join us at St John Vianney on 14 May at 7.15pm.
We are also staging a ‘Palestinian Child Prisoners Walk’. Please join in and support this event:
Palestinian Child Prisoners Protest at Wood Green Library, 2pm, Saturday 11 May 2013
Lynda Brennan (Chair HJFP)