PCHR releases report on torture and genocide against Palestinians from Gaza
Palestinian detainees and Israeli soldiers
The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) has published a 129-page report documenting the systematic use of torture and inhumane treatment of Palestinians from Gaza detained by Israel since 7 October 2023. The report, entitled “Torture and Genocide: The Shattered Futures of Former Palestinian Detainees in Gaza”, is based on the testimonies of 100 former detainees, including 10 women, and legal visits to 53 others still in custody. The report concludes that the treatment of Palestinians from Gaza amounts to torture and that such torture forms an integral part of the ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people.
Key findings include:
- Mass arbitrary arrests of civilians, including children and the elderly, from homes, hospitals, shelters, and streets
- Detention without charge or access to legal counsel, under inhumane conditions
- Detainees subjected to brutal physical and psychological torture, including beatings, electrocution, suspension, sexual violence, extremely tight handcuffing and forced stress positions
- Release of detainees injured and/or in a severely weakened state, into a war zone, without support or protection.
Evidence of intent to destroy the population of Gaza by direct perpetrators, highlighting how genocidal and dehumanising rhetoric by senior Israeli officials has permeated down to the field, shaping the actions of lower-level personnel, including the systematic use of torture.
To date, thousands of Palestinian detainees from Gaza arrested following 7 October 2023 remain in Israeli detention and continue to be subjected to torture and ill-treatment. Many of them have been forcibly disappeared by the Israeli occupation authorities. An online reporting platform launched by PCHR in August 2024 has already received hundreds of cases of enforced disappearances.
As a result, PCHR calls on States to enforce international law, prevent genocide and torture, and investigate crimes of genocide and torture under universal jurisdiction. PCHR also demands unhindered access to places of detention and urgent ICC action.