Alwaght- Palestinian prisoners' mass hunger strike enters its 6th day despite all punitive measures taken by Israeli prison officials against over 1,600 prisoners who staged their open-ended hunger strike under the slogan “Freedom and dignity”.
The Participants, who launched their hunger strike on 17 April-the occasion of the Palestinian Prisoner Day- , have made 13 demands to improve their detention conditions, but the Israeli prison authority responded negatively and threatened to take punitive measures to force them to end their hunger strike.
Prison forces carried out on Friday violent raids on cells of hunger-striking prisoners, especially in Nitzan jail, where they used police dogs during their searches and confiscated all salt supplies and books of the holy Qur’an, palinfo news website reported.
According to the Palestinian website, on the first day of the hunger strike, the Israeli prison authority ordered the confiscation of prisoners’ belongings, including clothes, while it keeps transferring the hunger strikers from one prison to another and isolating others.
Nitzan jail is used for the isolation of hunger strikers, amid inhumane incarceration conditions.
In a new development, the Hunger strike Information Committee said that a number of prisoners in section 16 of Ramon jail joined the hunger strike battle.
UN Watches Closely
The United Nations' spokesman said on Tuesday the international body is keeping a close eye on the situation of more than Palestinian prisoners, who have launched an open-ended hunger strike in Israeli regime's jails.
Unprecedented in scale, the protest started on Monday to force Israeli prison authorities to provide more humane conditions for the inmates.
“We are obviously aware of the situation and following the developments closely,” UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said on Tuesday. He said “as a matter of principle, wherever it may be, we always call for prisoners to be treated in a humane way.”
However, in addition to Israeli prison officials, Israeli citizens also spare no effort to taunt Palestinian detainees who are on hunger strike.
A group of Israeli hardliners organized a barbecue next to an Israeli jail in the West Bank where Palestinian prisoners are on a hunger strike to taunt them, saying they hoped the smell would make their abstention harder.
"At this moment [the hunger strikers] will smell the food's scent and maybe later in the evening they will see it on television," event organiser Ofer Sofer told AFP in front of two barbecue pits.
"It is a bunch of terrorists that are threatening us with a hunger strike. We are happy that they are on strike. Let them have this strike as long as they want."
