For more than 93 days, the Palestinian activist and prominent leader of the Popular Front, Khalida Jarrar, “Umm Jaffa,” has been subjected to a systematic campaign of repression and abuse that threatens her life in the prison cells of the Zionist occupation, where she faces harsh conditions in solitary confinement. Despite all of this, she is steadfast in the face of the policy of slow death.
“Umm Yafa”, who is one of the most prominent symbols of the Palestinian resistance, lives in a narrow, unventilated room that lacks the most basic necessities of life, such as water and light, to the point that her detention room has become like a grave.
According to her lawyer, the activist Jarrar has no choice but to lie down next to the door to be able to breathe with the least amount of oxygen, in a tragic scene that reflects the cruelty to which Palestinian prisoners are subjected.
The 61-year-old activist Khalida Jarrar is not an ordinary prisoner. She has gone through a bitter detention experience that began in 2015, when she was arrested four times before her last arrest in December 2023, which was her fifth. Throughout these years, the activist has spent more than six years in the occupation’s prisons, carrying endless suffering in her heart, during which she lost her mother in 2015, her father in 2018, and her daughter in 2021. The occupation did not even allow her to say goodbye to them, in a clear war crime that represents a flagrant violation of human rights and international laws.
Today, 11 months after her last arrest, “Umm Yaffa” is still being subjected to failed and continuous attempts by the Zionist prison administration to break her will, but she remains steadfast, adhering to her national principles and her valiant resistance.
These desperate attempts by the occupation to target the morale of the prisoners will not succeed in breaking their resolve, but rather confirm their adherence to the cause of their people.
What the activist Khalida Jarrar is being subjected to is part of a comprehensive campaign of abuse targeting Palestinian prisoners, especially female prisoners who face similar conditions in the occupation’s prisons. These oppressive policies pursued by the occupation and led by war criminal Ben Gvir are failed attempts to subjugate the Palestinian people, but the will of the Palestinian resistance and its living leaders will remain stronger than these brutal practices.
The Hanthala Center for Prisoners and Freed Prisoners calls on the international community and humanitarian organizations to urgently intervene to save the life of the activist Khalida Jarrar and all prisoners in the occupation prisons, and to work to stop the repeated violations against them.
It also calls on the masses of our people to escalate the struggle to support the prisoners at all levels, and to demand the free people of the world to organize global solidarity campaigns with the Palestinian prisoners, especially with the activist Khalida Jarrar, and to continue to put continuous pressure on the occupation to stop these ongoing violations and protect the rights of the prisoners.
Hanthala Center for Prisoners and Freed Prisoners
13-November-2024