Consul general says UK government acting on Samer Issawi and other prisoners
Drawing of Samer Issawi by Doc Jazz, see second item. Issawi’s weight has fallen to 45kg and his heart rate to 28 beats a minute.
‘We do not want new martyrs,’ PA official says
By Ma’an news
April 06, 2013
RAMALLAH — The Palestinian Authority prisoners minister said Saturday that the Israeli government would be held responsible if another prisoner died in custody, after two died in separate incidents in a month.
“We do not want any new martyrs. The Israeli government is responsible for any explosion that might happen,” Issa Qaraqe said in a meeting with the UK consul general, Sir Vincent Fean.
The officials were discussing the plight of Samer Issawi, a long-term hunger-striker in critical condition in Israeli custody. He has been on hunger strike since August 2012.
According to Qaraqe, Issawi’s heart rate has decreased to 28 beats per minute and could stop “at any moment.”
He called on the UK to intervene to save Issawi and other prisoners in Israeli custody.
In response, Sir Vincent Fean said the British government was following up on the situation of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails and contacting the Israeli side directly, Qaraqe’s office said.
Fean was quoted as saying that the UK was concerned about the latest developments.
On Thursday, the British foreign office said it was concerned about the deaths of two Palestinian teenagers and the Israeli military’s allegations that Palestinians attacked a post with firebombs.
“We are deeply concerned about the deaths of two Palestinian teenagers in the West Bank and reports of the Israeli military being attacked with firebombs,” a UK spokesman said in a statement.
Israeli forces demolished the home of Samer Issawi’s brother on January 1, 2013. Photo by WAFA
Samer Issawi at risk of imminent death, on artificial ventilation
By Dr. Tariq Shadid aka Doc Jazz, Musical Intifada/Occupied Palestine
April 06, 2013
Ramallah, Palestine – Lawyer Shireen Issawi, sister of the hunger-striking Jerusalemite political prisoner Samer Issawi, has confirmed that her brother is living in an extremely critical health situation. She indicated that “at the moment, he is living on artificial ventilation, and is in danger of dying at any instance.”
Issawi also clarified in a report to Palestine that her brother is in an especially dangerous condition after his weight decreased to 45 kilograms, and his average heart rate to 24 beats per minute, whereas 85 beats per minute is normal for a healthy human being.
She also said: “Samer is exposed to death at any moment, and to the occurrence of a brain infarction due to various diseases that are affecting his body”, as she demanded the release of this information to all human rights institutions and international organizations, in order for them to intervene with the utmost urgency to save his life as quickly as possible.
She wondered: “What is the world waiting for? What is our Palestinian people waiting for? Are they waiting for Samer to return to us in the same way that the prisoners Maysara Abuhamdieh and Arafat Jaradat, and others, returned to their families, being carried on their shoulders?”
Political prisoner Maysara Ahmad Abuhamdieh (64 years) was martyred at the Israeli Soroka hospital last Tuesday, as a direct result of medical negligence, which raised the number of prisoner martyrs to 204.
Samer Issawi is insisting on continuing his open-ended hunger strike, which he started in August last year, protesting against his renewed arrest which took place in violation of the prisoner exchange accords under which the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit was released. These accords became known as “the Fulfillment of the Free”.
Under the “Fulfillment of the Free”, the resistance secured the release of 1047 male prisoners and one female, in varying batches, in exchange for the soldier Gilad Shalit, in these accords that were signed between Hamas and ‘Israel’, under the auspices of Egypt.
The Jerusalemite political prisoner, whose roots lie in the Issawiya village south of Occupied Jerusalem, refused to accept an Israeli offer in which he would be banished to the Gaza Strip, holding on to his demand that he be released and returned to his village, which is suffering from continued attempts by the occupation to drive its Palestinian inhabitants out.
Postings editor: Tariq Shahid’s music video Hunger is a great political rap song, reiterating and expanding the notion of hunger and the first to rhyme people with sheeple. It is marred by a refrain ‘never charged, never tried by the damned fourth reich’. Israel is not comparable to the Third Reich. The Third Reich was powered by an annihilatory drive that began with the political activists of the left, proceeded through the mentally ill and disabled, gypsies, Slavs and finally and most comprehensively, all Jewish people.