[Ppnews] Israeli army kidnapped 6200 children since 2000

[Political Prisoner News]

Palestinian Ministry of Prisoners' affairs: Israeli army kidnapped 
6200 children since 2000

author

  Friday November 20, 2009 14:36
author
 by IMEMC Service

http://www.imemc.org/index.php?obj_id=53&story_id=57166

An official report, received by Arab League from the minister of 
prisoners' affairs in the Palestinian Authority (Ramallah), revealed 
that the Israeli occupation forces have kidnapped about 6,200 
Palestinian children since the beginning of Al Aqsa Intifada (2000), 
including approximately 337 children still detained in Israeli 
prisons and interrogation centers.

During last Saturday's meeting of the Arab League's permanent 
delegates council, which was set to discuss the conditions of 
Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails, Minister Issa Qaraqe 
introduced the report, which unveiled the "repressive, inhumane 
practices of the Israeli occupation authorities against Palestinian 
children in Israeli prisons and detention camps," stressing that this 
violates the rules of international law, conventions on children's 
rights, and all international norms.

The report pointed out that "any person under the age of 18 is 
considered a child, according to international law, the Convention on 
the Rights of the Child and, recently, Israeli domestic law," and 
according to the definition of juvenile by the United Nations' Basic 
Principles for the Treatment of Prisoners, which were adopted in the 
General Assembly Resolution 45/113, dated December 14, 1990.

Qaraqe stated that the Israeli occupation authorities "deprive 
detained children from the basic rights granted by international 
conventions, such as the right to know the reason for their arrest, 
the right to counsel, the right of families to know the reason and 
the place of detention of their child, the right to appear before the 
judge, the right to object to the charge and lodge an appeal against 
it, the right to communicate with the outside world, and the right to 
a humane treatment that preserves the dignity of the detained child."

The report warned that the occupation authorities, "blatantly 
violated the rights of detained children"; dealt with them as 
"potential subversives", "and subjected them to different types of 
torture and cruel treatment, such as beating, sleep deprivation, 
starvation, sexual harassment, and deprivation of visits. The 
occupation forced applied the worst mental and physical means to 
extract confessions from child prisoners and to pressure them to work 
for Israeli intelligence."

The report also mentioned that during the first Intifada, massive 
numbers of children were arrested and detained on charges of throwing 
stones and other forms of political resistance, whereas, during the 
second intifada, Tel Aviv began adopting administrative detention 
against Palestinian children and it started convicting and detaining 
children under the age of 14 for periods of up to 6 months.

The report further stated that, according to the 2002 annual report 
of the Defense of Children International organization, those arrest 
patterns did not exist during the years of the first intifada.




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