An Israeli human rights organisation has
accused the government of torturing children after it emerged some were kept in
outdoor cages during winter.It said the incident in Ramla was just one example
of a broad range of abuses being suffered.
The Public Committee Against Torture in
Israel (PCATI) published a report which claimed children suspected of minor
crimes were subjected to “public caging”, threats and acts of sexual violence
and military trials without representation. It came as the government’s
Public Petitions Committee held a hearing to discuss the issue, which the PCATI
said must be addressed with a change to the law.
The country’s Public Defender’s Office
(PDO) recently released details of one particularly shocking visit by its
lawyers to a detention facility.
“During our visit, held during a fierce
storm that hit the state, attorneys met detainees who described to them a
shocking picture: in the middle of the night dozens of detainees were
transferred to the external iron cages built outside the IPS transition
facility in Ramla,” the PDO wrote on its website.
“It turns out that this procedure, under
which prisoners waited outside in cages, lasted for several months, and was
verified by other officials.”
Although the practice of keeping children
caged was reported to have lasted for months, there is no suggestion that the
individuals were so detained for that period.
According to the Jerusalem Post, Justice Minister Tzipi Livni called
for the practice of keeping children in cages to be stopped as soon as she
learned of it, and the prison service issued a statement saying the situation
had been improved following the “criticism”.
The PCATI said this was not enough, and
called for the country’s relatively high threshold for what can be classed
“acts of abuse” to be lowered in the case of children.
Their report argued: “Torture is a means
of attacking an individual’s fundamental modes of psychological and social
functioning” as described in the Istanbul Protocol. Furthermore, “torture can
impact a child directly or indirectly. The impact can be due to the child’s
having been tortured or detained, the torture of parents or close family
members or witnessing torture and violence.”
Yesterday the Knesset committee said
Israeli law as it currently exists was being violated by the manner of arrest
and detention conditions of Palestinian children, the Post reported.
The committee also took issue with the
fact that the government appeared not to keep records of the frequency or scope
of disputed practices like midnight arrests.
The PCATI quoted figures from the campaign
group Defence for Children International's Palestine section, saying: “The
majority of Palestinian child detainees are charged with throwing stones, and
74 per cent experience physical violence during arrest, transfer or
interrogation.”
It said Israel was the only country to
systematically prosecute children in its military courts, and added that “no
Israeli children come into contact with the military court system”.
Source : The Independent
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