International solidarity campaign launched for Palestinian administrative detainees

An international campaign to show solidarity with Palestinian administrative detainees in Israeli jails, who went on a mass hunger strike on 24 April to protest against being detained without charges, is due to launch on Friday, 9 May under the title “water and salt”.

According to the Pls48.net news website, human rights activists who are organising the campaign explained through social networking sites that they aim to “break the silence about Palestinian administrative detainees suffering in Israeli jails and to demand that the Israeli occupation drops the secret evidence which it uses as a pretext to extend their detention without charges”.

Meanwhile, journalists, political activists, lawyers and the prisoners’ families have launched a media campaign under the title “drop the secret evidence” in support of the Palestinian administrative detainees.

The campaign’s organisers said they aim to bring media attention to the Palestinian prisoners’ mass hunger strike during the coming days until 11 May, when Palestinian and Arab media outlets will be invited to cover a series of activities organised in parallel with the social media campaign, using the hash tags #stop_administrative_detention, #water_and_salt and #drop_ secret_evidence.

The campaign aims to encourage human rights organisations, mainly the International Red Cross, to intensify their visits to prisoners on hunger strike, to highlight the suffering of prisoners’ families who live in anticipation of seeing their loved ones but never know when to expect their release, and to raise the prisoners’ morale.

Israeli intelligence uses secret evidence as an excuse to imprison Palestinians indefinitely without charges under what the occupation authorities’ call administrative detention, and neither the prisoners nor their lawyers have access to such evidence.