Still torturing children

14Jun09

A Defence for Children International report published earlier this week contains the testimonies of 33 children subjected to abuse by Israeli soldiers.

The report finds that,

‘illegally obtained confessions are routinely used as evidence in the military courts to convict around 700 Palestinian children every year. And the most common charge against these children is for throwing stones. Once sentenced, the children who gave these testimonies were mostly imprisoned inside Israel in breach of the Fourth Geneva Convention where they receive few family visits, and little or no education.’

It concludes that ‘widespread and systematic abuse is occurring within a general culture of impunity where in 600 complaints made against Israeli Security Agency interrogators for alleged ill-treatment and torture, not a single criminal investigation was ever conducted’.

Read the full report, Palestinian Child Prisoners: The systematic and institutionalised ill-treatment and torture of Palestinian children by Israeli authorities [.pdf].


Filed under: Israeli / Palestinian, Torture   |  2 Comments
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2 Responses to “Still torturing children”  

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  1. 1 JamieSW on June 14, 2009 said:

    See also this recent article in the Independent:

    ‘He [an Israeli officer] said about 150 Palestinians, some as young as 14, were bound, blindfolded and detained at the village school during the operation, which lasted from 3am to 3pm. He was told it was aimed at preventing village youths throwing stones against nearby settler roads. It was clear many of the people detained had done nothing wrong, but they were held to gather intelligence, he said.

    The worst beatings were in the bathrooms, he said. “The soldiers who took [detainees] to the toilet just exploded [over] them with beatings; cursed them with no reason. When they took one Arab to the toilet so that he could urinate, one of them gave him a slap that brought him to the ground. He had been handcuffed from behind with a nylon restraint and blindfolded. He wasn’t insolent, he didn’t do anything to get on anyone’s nerves … [it was] just because he’s an Arab. He was something like 15 years old.” The soldier said he saw a lot of soldiers “just knee [Palestinians] because it’s boring, because you stand there 10 hours, you’re not doing anything, so they beat people up.”

    And this from Israeli human rights lawyer Michael Sfard:

    ‘Colonel Itai Virob, a brigade commander in charge of hundreds of soldiers who spend their service facing a civilian population in the occupied territories, laid out his credo at the very beginning of his testimony. To his credit, he was sharp and clear and did not hide behind convoluted wording: “I think,” he said, “that the need to use violence in this sort of questioning is certainly reasonable.”…

    Then the truth went on and flowed uncontrollably out of Virob’s throat, without the perjuring mediation of the army spokesperson or military attorneys. The army’s practices were revealed layer by layer: Storming into a Palestinian village in jeeps, throwing stun grenades or bursting into houses — in order to “disturb the balance of the neighborhood, village or place” — is justified as a “disruption operation.” Discussing pressure methods, Virob acknowledged that “the vast majority is employed against uninvolved people.”…

    “Is slapping the heads of Palestinians allowed or not?” the prosecutor asked, and Virob spilled the occupation’s contaminated truth: “A slap, sometimes a punch to the scruff of the neck or the chest, sometimes a knee jab or strangulation to calm somebody down is reasonable.”’

  2. 2 CAvard on June 15, 2009 said:

    Jamie,

    Welcome back! So delighted to come back and see all new blog posts. Lots has happened since you were away. But nothing as special as trekking across SE Asia!

    CAvard


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