JENIN : Muna Qa’dan, a Palestinian woman who was released yesterday after serving 16 months in Israeli jails, said today that the female Palestinian prisoners are facing mounting suffering behind Israeli prison bars.
Qa’dan said the 31 Palestinian female prisoners incarcerated in the Israeli prison of Damon prison are subjected to numerous violations by the Israeli prison authorities, including harsh interrogation, solitary confinement, night-time raids on their rooms, beatings, verbal violence, the presence of surveillance cameras that breach their privacy and the lack of bathrooms inside the prison.
She said that the female prisoners are often prevented from gathering for the purpose of study, learning, worship or recreation.
Qa’dan pointed out to an escalation in Israeli repression campaigns against female prisoners following the September 2021 surprising escape of six Palestinian prisoners from the high-security Israeli prison of Gilboa.
‘Despite the harsh imprisonment conditions, ill-treatment, injustice, oppression and aggression by the prison authorities, the female Palestinian prisoners have not lost their determination, and have built inside the prison an outstanding organizational, cultural and intellectual institution that saw 7 female prisoners obtain university degrees,’ she said.
Qa’dan, who has spent more than 8 years in Israeli prisons said, “I bring a message from the female prisoners to all the free men of the world to stand by them until their liberation, and a special message directed to all the segments of our people to stand by them by all means.”