PCP Press office Statement - 18th May 2017
Following a month-long hunger strike by some 1,500 Palestinian political prisoners held in jails in Israel, the PCP reaffirms the demand for their release and its solidarity with their struggle to uphold their rights and dignity.
During the past month, PCP’s solidarity was expressed in various ways, including tabling a vote in the Assembly of the Republic - through which the Portuguese Parliament expressed its solidarity with Palestinian political prisoners in Israeli jails - , as well as with its intervention in the European Parliament.
The Palestinian patriots, by resorting to a dramatic hunger strike, protest and fight against torture and other forms of cruel, debasing and inhuman treatment to which they are subjected, for access to medical care and medicines, for the possibility of accessing their respective case files, meet with their defence lawyers and receive family visits.
Denouncing the worsening repression and conditions of detention by the Israeli authorities and the shocking silence of the media on the struggle of Palestinian political prisoners - a silence that contrasts with the violent campaigns of misinformation that, by instrumentalizing human rights, cover up imperialist destabilization operations and imperialist aggressions against sovereign states - the PCP calls for strengthening solidarity towards this just struggle.
The PCP reaffirms its solidarity with the struggle of the Palestinian people for respect and implementation of their inalienable national rights against the Zionist occupation, for the right to a free, viable and sovereign State with the 1967 borders and its capital in East Jerusalem.
The PCP considers that the Portuguese Government should uphold and act, respecting the Constitution of the Republic and within the framework of International Law, for the rights of the Palestinian people, namely respect for the rights of Palestinian political prisoners in Israeli jails and for their release.
