The Israeli authorities continues its crackdown on prisoners as the large-scale “Freedom and Dignity” prisoner hunger strike entered its second day. A source from the ICRC said the international organization had been notified that visits for Palestinian prisoners would be forbidden until further notice in response to the hunger strike, which official Palestinian news agency Wafa reported on Tuesday was being carried out by some 1,500 prisoners, according to Ma’an News Agency.
A spokesperson for IPS confirmed the information to Ma’an, specifying that visitations had been suspended “only for national security prisoners on hunger strike.” Amnesty International said in a statement ahead of the hunger strike last week that “Israel’s decades-long policy of detaining Palestinians from the occupied West Bank and Gaza in prisons inside Israel and depriving them of regular family visits is not only cruel but also a blatant violation of international law.”
Meanwhile, Palestinian Committee for Prisoners’ Affairs head Issa Qaraqe told Ma’an that Israeli authorities had prevented lawyers from visiting hunger-striking prisoners on Tuesday, and that IPS had declared a state of emergency in detention facilities holding Palestinian prisoners.
Source: https://www.middleeastobserver.org/2017/04/18/israel-suspends-family-vis…
