Tortured by the Palestinian police

[bemildred]

Life goes on for Wisam Hanna as the wounds on his body heal, but the painful memories remain.

Wisam and three of his relatives were interrogated by Palestinian police after a dispute with the mayor of their village. They were badly beaten.

"It was very violent in the prison in Ramallah, where there were five people. They held me down, they lay me on the table, took my trousers off and started hitting me on the back of my legs and the soles of my feet," Wisam said.

"Then they took my top off and made me stand in front of the window and started pulling my chest hairs out. Then they carried on slapping me and threw me onto the floor and started kicking me."

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/E90146FB-1B7E-491C-A844-570DADD06C73.htm

[Douglas Carpenter]

1. an excellent Palestinian organization that deals with Palestinian human rights issues

regardless who are the perpertratitors:


http://www.phrmg.org/

"About us

The Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group (PHRMG) was founded in December 1996 in response to the deteriorating state of democracy and human rights under the newly established Palestinian Authority. The group was founded by a diverse group of well-established Palestinians, including Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) members, newspaper editors, journalists, a union leader, veteran human rights activists and religious leaders. The political composition of its founders is diverse - including members of many Palestinian organizations and institutions - thereby ensuring the non-partisan character of the organization.

The PHRMG documents human rights violations committed against Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem, regardless of who is responsible. In effect, the PHRMG has dedicated much of its work to the monitoring of human rights violations committed by the Palestinian Authority. The PHRMG has instituted a number of projects to deal with the ongoing human rights violations. The projects include monitoring unit, freedom of expression and democracy center, settlers watch hotline and legal unit, etc… Our future projects in the coming two years include peace building development, peace building and conflict resolution monitoring, reforms to the Palestinian judicial system, democracy center, public education and out reach unit, etc…

The PHRMG believes that in spite of the ongoing Israeli occupation of the Palestinian Territories and the need to denounce Israeli human rights abuses, such scrutiny is essential in the current process of state building, to ensure that the future Palestinian State will be a truly democratic one. In the long run, the protection of human rights can only strengthen the Palestinian Authority.

Due to the absence and/or poor reliability of traditional democratic mechanisms, the PHRMG's principle strategy since its foundation has been to appeal to Palestinian public opinion and to international opinion in order to bring about positive change in the human rights situation. Violations of Palestinian human rights by both Palestinian and Israeli authorities persist with little accountability and, for the foreseeable future, the PHRMG will maintain and improve upon its traditional human rights monitoring and outreach activities.

PHRMG Relationship with the International, Local Community

The PHRMG maintains strong ties with international human rights groups, media and donors. Their cooperation and partnership has proved vital to PHRMG’s outreach and support internationally, as well as to PHRMG’s ability to maintain its high degree of independence at home. As illustrations; Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Reporters without Borders regularly utilize PHRMG unpublished and published research for their reports. Since 1999, PHRMG director Bassem Eid gave 220 interviews to international media.

About Monitoring Unit

Our monitoring unit provides the monitoring and research base for PHRMG human rights outreach and legal activities. Field researchers located throughout the West Bank and the Gaza Strip divide their responsibilities into their geographic areas. Researcher responsibilities include keeping abreast of local developments, pursuing long-term monitoring tasks, and responding to urgent human rights situations, in order to record the eyewitness testimonies of victims, witnesses and other actors.

See the monitor in the icon of the monitor page

About Outreach Unit

Our outreach unit works closely with the Monitoring Unit. One of the main activities of the PHRMG is the publication of a bi-monthly report; the Palestinian Human Rights Monitor. Each edition of this publication has a particular focus: from torture and unlawful detention to freedom of expression and the censorship of the Palestinian press, or the right to education of Palestinian children in East Jerusalem. The Monitor has now earned a reputation for the quality, accuracy and objectivity of its reports. 1'000 English copies of the report are available for subscription in the form of a magazine, and 26'000 Arabic copies are distributed freely throughout the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem, in the hope to educate the Palestinian public and to strengthen democracy and the role of civil society.

Other Outreach activities include facilitating local and international media access to human rights issues in Palestine, initiating dialogue activities with institutions responsible for human rights violations, and implementing special projects. The PHRMG also maintains an extensive website - both in Arabic and in English - to grant wide access to all the publications of the Monitor, unpublished reports, and additional data and statistics collected by the organization.

About Bassem Eid

The PHRMG derives great strength from the experience of its Executive Director, Bassem Eid. Mr. Eid worked as the senior fieldworker for the Israeli information center in the occupying territories, B'Tselem for seven years. During this time, Mr. Eid earned international recognition for his documentation and publication of a wide range of human rights issues.

Mr. Eid is the co-author of the B'Tselem report on the Palestinian Preventive Security Service, "Neither Law nor Justice," and was involved in research for nearly every B'Tselem publication from 1989 to 1996. In appreciation for his work for B'Tselem and as a journalist, Mr. Eid was awarded the 1992 Emil Grunsweig Human Rights Award by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI).

Mr. Eid was also awarded the 1996 McGill / InterAmicus Robert S. Litvak Memorial Human Rights Award for his outspoken human rights advocacy. More recently, in 1999, the Gleitsman Foundation's Board of Judges presented Mr. Eid with the International Activist Award, in recognition of "his long effort to bring peace to the Middle East." This award was jointly received with ten other activists, including Mahmoud Abbas; Abu Mazen, Yossi Beilin, Faisal Husseini, Ahmed Qurei; Abu Ala and Uri Savir. 2002 nformazione Senza Frontiere (Information Without Boundaries), granted by an Italian organization for freedom of press in the world in Siena-Italy"

link to The Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group (PHRMG) :

http://www.phrmg.org/profile.htm


.

[bemildred]

2. Good for them.

I'm against torture whomever does it. It's a sign of a weak mind and faulty moral training. The notion that any good can come of it is fatuous. The particular case here, Mr. Wisam, seems to be the usual moronic bullying, not unlike when "other parties" we know do it. It seems to have far more to do with bullying a civilian population into submission than anything else, which is why it is so popular with tyrants of all stripes.

[Tom Joad]

3. I get tired of the human rights org. bashing in these parts. I thought stuff like that should be

confined to Little Green football areas of the internet.
I was wrong, of course.

[bemildred]

4. It all seems to depend on whose rights are getting violated, from what I can see.

Some people seem to think of them as "human privileges" or something. Like they were rewards for obedience.