“Israel” accused of mistreating women prisoners

A human rights group slammed "Israeli" treatment of Palestinian female prisoners in a UN-sponsored report released, saying pregnant women are often shackled on their way to hospitals to give birth.
The women prisoners are held in ""Israeli" prisons and detention centers which were designed for men and do not respond to female needs," said a report by the Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association, which was sponsored by the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM).
Pregnant detainees "do not enjoy preferential treatment in terms of diet, living space or transfer to hospitals," it said. "Pregnant prisoners are also chained to their beds until they enter delivery rooms and shackled once again after giving birth.
"The unbalanced diet, insufficient amounts of protein-rich foods, lack of natural sunlight and movement, poor ventilation and moisture all contribute to the exacerbation and the development of health problems such as skin diseases, anaemia, asthma, and prolonged stomach aches, joint and back pains."
In addition, the majority of the prisoners were "subjected to some form of mental pressure and torture through the process of their arrest," including beatings, insults, threats, sexual harassment and humiliation techniques.
The vast majority of Palestinian women in "Israeli" prisons are young -- some 13 percent of those arrested in 2007-2008 were under the age of 18 and 56 percent were between 20 and 30 years of age.
The detainees are often denied means to study, which violates their rights to a higher education and suffer from restrictions on visits.
In September 2008, some 60 percent had at least one family member who was not allowed to visit them. Open visits were restricted to mothers once their children reached the age of six.
Female prisoners with a husband or other relatives also in jail were "accorded the right to family visits... after months of delays."
In addition, the "Israeli" prison authorities do not provide gender-sensitive rehabilitation programs, it said.
The report was based on interviews with 125 Palestinian women who were arrested, detained or imprisoned in "Israeli" jails between November 2007 and November 2008. Of those, some 65 remain in prison -- part of some 9,000 Palestinians currently incarcerated in "Israel".
A spokesman for the "Israeli" prison authorities said he was not aware of the report and could not comment.

A Palestinian human rights group yesterday lambasted "Israel's" treatment of female Palestinian prisoners, saying they are beaten during their arrests, their education and visitation rights are violated and those who are pregnant are shackled before and after they give birth.

The report by the Addameer Prisoners Support and Human Rights Association, which was sponsored by the United Nations and based on dozens of interviews with current and former female inmates in "Israeli" jails, condemned "Israel" for providing them poor access to health care, education and family visits and said the country's prisons and detention centres were ill-suited for women.

Addameer slammed "Israel's" treatment of pregnant prisoners, saying their hands and feet are often shackled with metal chains when they are transferred to hospitals to give birth. The women are frequently chained to their beds until they enter the delivery rooms and once again afterwards, the group said.

Moreover, pregnant inmates or women accompanied by children under the age of two do not enjoy preferential treatment in terms of diet or living space, Addameer added.

Many female prisoners develop health problems, including skin diseases, anaemia, asthma, prolonged stomach aches and joint and back pains, because they have little access to natural sunlight, balanced diets, protein-rich foods and ventilation, according to the report. Furthermore, the restricted gynaecological health care leads to infections for many of them.

According to Addameer, most of the prisoners were subjected to some form of "mental pressure and torture" during their arrests, typically made during the night at their homes. Furthermore, "Israeli" interrogators use beatings, insults, threats, sexual harassment and humiliation to coerce the women to make confessions, the group added.

Esra Amarneh, a 23-year-old university student from the Deheishe refugee camp near the West Bank town of Bethlehem, recalled being beaten along with her father during her arrest on a snowy night in February of last year and later humiliated by her interrogators.

In her testimony to Addameer, Ms Amarneh, who stayed in prison for 10 months, described how she was taken to a special room for strip searching, where female guards threatened to bring in a male soldier to force her to take off her clothes after she refused to undress. When she finally stripped naked, the women guards carried out a body search "and touched me all over my body including intimate parts", she said.

Ms Amarneh said that a fellow prisoner, who was 16 at the time, scrambled to cover herself with clothes when she was being strip searched in a room where the bathroom was being used by a male guard, who suddenly swung open the door and rapidly walked out.

Ms Amarneh, in an e-mailed reply to questions, recalled being detained in a cell full of insects, with no heating and only wet blankets to protect her from the winter cold, and being shackled in chains on her way to the health clinics or the courtroom.

According to Addameer, Ms Amarneh's experience is typical of many of the female inmates. Their numbers have risen significantly since the start of the second Palestinian uprising in 2000, soaring to a peak of 120 women in 2004 from just five inmates four years earlier. In the past eight years, more than 700 women were detained by "Israel", which currently holds about 65 Palestinian female inmates.

Most the prisoners are young, with 56 per cent of the female inmates in 2007 and 2008 between the ages of 20 and 30 at the time of their arrest, while 13 per cent were under 18.

Using tactics such as hunger strikes since 2000, the women have managed to ameliorate their detention conditions, including by convincing the prison administration to liaise with them through a representative and gaining access to a small library and study room at one of the two "Israeli" prisons in which they are held. But the women still face myriad hurdles in fighting for their rights, Addameer said.