Pro-Palestine rally in Hiroshima
Demonstrators in the Japanese city expressed their opposition against Hiroshima’s Mayor Matsui Kazumi for inviting Israel to the peace ceremony commemorating the 79th anniversary of the atomic bomb tragedy.
Israeli rights group decries ‘systemic’ torture of Palestinians in Israeli detention
B’Tselem has released a report documenting what it calls “systemic” torture of thousands of Palestinians swept into Israeli detention centres, many without charge, since the war on Gaza started in October.
While Palestinians have spoken about the widespread use of torture in Israeli detention facilities for decades, a series of reports suggest that those abuses have surged amid the war.
The report titled “Welcome to Hell” comes after right-wing protests erupted in Israel last week in support of Israeli soldiers faced with arrest over accusations of forcibly sodomising Palestinian detainees.
The group says that the report on the abuse of Palestinians held in Israeli “torture camps” shows “a reality of harsh, arbitrary daily violence, sexual assault, humiliation, starvation, inhumane hygiene conditions, sleep deprivation, denial of medical care, and more”.
Report says nearly half of Palestinian detainees held without trial
We can now bring you more on the report by the Israeli human rights watchdog B’Tselem that found widespread torture of Palestinian detainees in Israeli prisons.
The report adds that nearly half of these Palestinians are being held without trial, a practice known as administrative detention and long criticised by rights groups for its denial of basic civil liberties.
The report states that of the 9,623 Palestinians held in Israeli prisons as of early July, 4,781 had been detained without trial. The Palestinian Prisoner’s Society more recently put the number of Palestinians held by Israel at about 9,900.
“Some were jailed simply for expressing sympathy for the suffering of Palestinians,” the report states. “Others were taken into custody during [Israeli] military activity in the Gaza Strip, on the sole grounds that they came under the vague definition of ‘men of fighting age’.”
