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Palestinian Authority Cited for Human Rights Abuses
NEW YORK, Nov. 30 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - The Palestinian Authority (PA) was cited in a human rights report Friday for continuing abuse of prisoners in its justice system, including lack of access to fair trials and torture.
In a report released Friday, the New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) said that the PA has detained about 450 individuals without charge or trial, most of whom are suspected of being informants or collaborators for the Israeli army.
"The Palestinian Authority wants to be treated as an equal with other governments," said Kenneth Roth, Executive Director of Human Rights Watch. "President Arafat must ensure that the PA has a functioning judicial system which operates to protect the human rights of all Palestinians."
The 50-page report examines underlying weaknesses of the Palestinian justice system that existed long before the current Intifada, or uprising, but also looks at severe deterioration of the system due to Israeli restrictions and destruction of police and detention centers over the course of the Intifada.
Interference by the PA executive - including the president, ministers, the police and the range of different security forces - has helped create what the report calls the "fundamental shortcomings of the Palestinian justice system," undermining the judiciary and legal systems.
The report says that such weakening of those systems gives more freedom to security forces - allowing them to practice "arbitrary detention or mistreatment" with impunity - and that judges have been arrested or removed without good cause by the executive.
"The Palestinian justice system was weak and politicized after operating from 1967 until 1994 under Israeli military administration," the report says, "which did not encourage an independent judiciary and neglected its physical infrastructure."
Now, the report continues, with the 1994 inception of the PA, the justice system is required to deal with political and security issues as it had not done since 1948. And after the Intifada began last September, the report said, the Israeli responses have "battered" the fragile system even further.
"The policies of closures, blockades, and other restrictions on freedom of movement have brought chaos to the day-to-day functioning of the courts," the report says, also citing the damage or destruction of "police, security, and civil defense installations - including prisons and detention centers" and Israeli harassment of human rights lawyers.
The human rights abuses alleged by the report include "torture of detainees, arbitrary arrest, prolonged arbitrary detention, the imposition of the death penalty and carrying out of executions after grossly unfair trials, the failure to bring to justice those responsible for vigilante killings, and the impunity of security forces and other officials who commit serious abuses."
The use of torture, including "'shabah' (prolonged sitting or standing in painful positions); 'falaqa' (beating on the soles of the feet); punching; kicking; and suspension from the wrists," is facilitated by incommunicado detention, the report said.
Despite release orders from the High Court, arbitrarily detained individuals remain in captivity. They are often arrested without warrant, the report says, and can spend months in detention without charge or trial after being denied access to a lawyer during interrogation.
According to the report, twenty-eight Palestinians have died in custody since the PA's inception in 1994, five of them since the Intifada began. Of those five, the report says, at least three of the deaths raise suspicion of torture in custody.
Part of what contributes to the persistence of torture, the report says, is a "general public attitude that alleged collaborators deserve whatever treatment they receive," along with impunity and lack of training for security officers.
Despite protests that the current conflict would make it difficult to change the situation of the justice system, HRW pressed the "urgent need to stop those widespread and serious human rights violations that are being committed by Palestinians officials against fellow Palestinians."
HRW recommended that the PA publicly condemn all torture or ill-treatment of detainees, investigate every torture allegation and every death in custody - publicizing all information - and hold responsible those found to be guilty of committing human rights abuses.
Further recommendations to the PA, and to Israel and the United States, aimed to secure the rights of Palestinian prisoners to fair trials, access to lawyers, family and medical treatment, among other rights.
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