The 17th of April is a significant day of commemoration for two peoples separated by continents but subjected to the same neo-colonial, imperialist oppression. These two peoples’ manner of commemoration is widely different. For Cubans, it is a celebration of their victory over the US-backed ‘Bay of Pigs’ invasion. However, for Palestinians it is not a day of celebration; it is a day of sombre and sober reflection. For Palestinians, today is ‘Palestinian Prisoner Day’, the day dedicated to Palestinian prisoners languishing in the inhumane Israeli prison system.
Israel currently holds almost 10 000 Palestinians in its prison system. Among these prisoners are at least 351 minors; some are mere children as young as 12 years old (if not younger). Most of these prisoners are held in a form of legal limbo called ‘administrative detention’, which means that they have not been charged with any offence and can be held indefinitely until the Israeli authorities arbitrarily decide to release them. Many Palestinian prisoners spend years in administrative detention before they are released.
This tactic mirrors the ‘detention without trial’ policy that South Africa’s apartheid government used to quell dissent among our population and freedom fighters. Palestinian prisoners are almost all ‘political prisoners’, just as South Africa’s freedom fighters were. We are all too familiar with an illegitimate legal system that imposes arbitrary detention against innocent people and dresses it up as ‘justice’. Just as in South Africa, Israel’s mass imprisonment of Palestinians is part of a systematic campaign of repression perpetrated by the Zionist entity against the Palestinian people as a whole. Different soil, on a different continent, yet the same crime is being committed.
This repressive campaign follows a disturbing pattern. Israeli Occupation Forces regularly raid Palestinian villages and towns and mostly target young Palestinian men, who are arbitrarily rounded up en masse, shackled, stripped and blindfolded … then taken away to undisclosed locations. Their families are left to deal with the psychological trauma of not knowing the fate of their loved ones, who are now being held by one of the most brutal regimes in the world.
The prisoners themselves are held in torture camps that simply masquerade under the term ‘prison’. It has been widely established that Palestinian prisoners are subjected to systematic torture and abuse by Israeli prison authorities. They are denied basic food and medication, with a disturbing increase in the number of prisoners dying from starvation and from lack of medical care. A typical example of such an Israeli torture camp is the ‘Sde Teiman’ prison.
A recent report by UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese, released on 23 March 2026 and titled ‘Torture and Genocide’, summarised the barbaric prison conditions in these words:
“Torture has become integral to the domination of and punishment inflicted on men, women and children, both through custodial abuse and through a relentless campaign of forced displacement, mass killings, deprivation and the destruction of all means of life to inflict long-term collective pain and suffering. A continuous, territorially pervasive regime of psychological terror is being imposed, designed to break bodies and deprive a people of their dignity and force them from their land. This is not incidental violence. It is the architecture of settler-colonialism, built on a foundation of dehumanisation and maintained by a policy of cruelty and collective torture.”
This is an intolerable state of affairs, and a clear indication of the sheer lack of humanity inherent in the Zionist entity and systems.
This year a particularly dark cloud looms over the commemoration of the thousands of Palestinian political prisoners abducted by the Israeli Occupation forces and held in Israel’s appalling torture camps. A discriminatory law, passed by the Israeli Knesset on 30 March 2026, authorises the death penalty against Palestinian prisoners.
It is a patently discriminatory law that applies solely to Palestinians; no Israeli citizen will ever face the death penalty in ‘the only democracy in the Middle East’. If you are a student of history, you would know that the last country to pass such an inhumane and discriminatory law was Nazi Germany. It is a damning indictment of the Zionist entity that they have chosen to follow in the footsteps of the very people who perpetrated atrocities against the Jewish people. The lessons of history have not been learnt.
It is now patently obvious that the Zionist entity intends to erase the Palestinian people and culture. We have no idea how many Palestinian prisoners face impending death based on fabricated charges. Palestinians do not face trial in civilian courts, as Israeli citizens do. Instead, Palestinians are tried in Israeli military courts … which have a conviction rate of up to 95% against Palestinians.
Our demands echo the very demands that have been made by the Palestinian human rights organisations Al Haq and Addameer. The Palestinian demands, that have already been presented to the UN Secretary-General and the UN Special Rapporteur on Extra-Judicial Killings, are outlined below:
- Label the ‘death penalty’ law as an unlawful attack on the Palestinian people, including children, that constitutes acts of genocide, apartheid, collective punishment, torture and some of the most serious human rights violations;
- Call upon Third States to pressure the Israeli government to rescind this new death penalty law;
- Demand Israel immediately cease its unlawful military activity and genocide in the Occupied Palestinian Territories;
- Remind states of their binding obligations to prevent and punish the crime of genocide and to respect and ensure respect for the Geneva Conventions of 1949, which include imposing a full arms embargo, cutting diplomatic and trade relations, imposing comprehensive sanctions, and pursuing accountability.
- Urge States to act in accordance with their legal obligations as outlined in the International Court of Justice’s Advisory Opinion on Legal Consequences arising from the Policies and Practices of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem;
- Call on the UN Security Council to implement economic sanctions and other countermeasures capable of forcing Israel to adhere to its binding obligations under international law and ending its mass atrocities against the Palestinian people;
- Demand the reconstitution of the UN Centre and Special Committee against Apartheid;
- Ask the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court to expedite the investigation into the situation in Palestine with full resources and onsite visits as promised in December 2022.
We ask South Africans to rally behind these demands, to be true to our history and legacy of resistance to apartheid and to support the unequivocal right of all people to live a life of dignity and freedom. Once more, our history and connection with the Palestinians make any other position hypocritical. We know too much about harsh ‘justice’ meted out by an illegitimate legal system for us to ignore this issue.
For Media Enquiries:
083 417 4983 – Yeshelen Govender
083 634 6093 – Firoza Mayet
*Image Credit: Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies*
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