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Marwan Barghouti
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JOHANNESBURG,
August 31 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - More than a thousand
people allied to the anti-globalization Palestinian Support Committee
(PSC) Friday night, August 30, 2002, met in Johannesburg to launch a
campaign to free Marwan Barghouti from prison in Israel.
"We are looking for the support of the South African people to hold
Israel accountable for its crimes against the Palestinian people,"
his wife Fadwa told the chanting, singing crowd, reported Agence
France-Presse (AFP).
Banners like "Globalize the Intifada against Imperialism" and
"Stop the Holocaust of the Palestinians" were plastered around
the packed Johannesburg city hall.
"Marwan Barghouti is a symbol of the Palestinian people," his
lawyer Khader Shikrat said, calling for the release of "all
Palestinian political prisoners".
"There is similarity between Israel and apartheid, between Nelson
Mandela and our leader Marwan Barghouti," he said.
Marwan Barghouti, 42, is suspected of leading the Al Aqsa Martyrs
Brigades, an armed offshoot of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Fatah
group that claimed responsibility for numerous attacks against Israeli
targets.
Formerly the West Bank Secretary-General of the Fatah group, he was
seized by Israeli forces April 15 on suspicion of masterminding some of
Al Aqsa's strongest attacks on Israelis.
PSC organizer Na'eem Jeenah said that their campaign was related to
sustainable development since development and politics were inseparable.
Scenes of destruction in the Palestinian territories around each of the
UN Earth Summit's themes, like water and health, were displayed on a
screen and about a dozen Palestinian visitors went onto the stage.
Popular anti-privatization forum (APF) leader Trevor Ngwane gave a
speech on the connection between the struggle of South Africa's poor and
the Palestinians during the rally, which lasted several hours.
The forum and PSC are major organizations in the anti-summit coalition,
the Social Movement Indaba, one of two groups marching to the summit
Saturday, August 31, 2002, to put forward their demands, departing from
the poor township of Alexandra.
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Kader Shkirat, Barghouti’s lawyer, is campaigning for his client’s release at Earth Summit
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International delegates of the Global People's Forum, a civil society
forum running parallel to the summit, are also marching Saturday from
Alexandra.
On Tuesday, August 27, Pro-Palestinian activists clashed with Israelis
showcasing the widespread use of solar energy in their country at a
fringe event of the Earth Summit, according to an AFP correspondent.
Some 30 Israelis and members of the World Union of Jewish Students were
singing, dancing and handing out leaflets on the diverse use of solar
energy in Israel at Johannesburg's Nasrec expo centre when a similar
number of pro-Palestinian activists stormed the area.
They shouted anti-Israel slogans and scuffled with the Israelis before
police separated the two groups.
The Israelis retaliated by loudly singing "Give Peace a
Chance."
Ghulam Mohammed Jassad, a South African member of the Palestine
Solidarity Movement, shouted: "Free Palestine. Israel is stealing
the wealth of Africa and the Middle East."
His colleague, Riaz Tayob added: "Our comrades are fighting
with stones and the Israelis are using F-16s."
On the first day of the Earth Summit, Monday, August 26, police ordered
yelling Jewish students out of a meeting of Palestinians campaigning to
free Barghouti.
The more than a dozen Jewish students, wearing T-shirts with the slogan
"Don't hijack the summit", shouted slogans accusing the
Palestinians of terrorism. 
