Palestinian Prisoners’ Day was marked at protests and rallies across Australia over April 17-19.
The 20th Arab Summit in Damascus in adopted April 17 in March 2008 as the day dedicated to calling for Palestinian and Arab political prisoners to be freed from Israeli jails and for their rights to be upheld in prison. As the Palestinian Commission for Detainees and Ex-Detainees puts it: “The question of Palestinian prisoners is central for the Palestinian cause”.
The Australia Palestinian Advocacy Network said that since 1967 more than 1 million Palestinians have been jailed in Israel’s occupation prisons. “Prisoners are subjected to abuse of legal process, torture and mistreatment, forced transfer and enforced separation from family, as well as dire prison conditions.”
It said the total number of prisoners is 9300, which includes 74 women, 350 children and 3358 administrative detainees. However these figures do not include information about the number of arrests Israel has carried out in Gaza. Also, the number of imprisoned Palestinians in Gaza is estimated to be in the thousands and no one knows of the number of enforced disappearances of Palestinians in Gaza.
In addition, guards at Israel’s notorious Sde Teiman torture camp, dubbed “Israel’s Guantanamo”, have admitted they use dogs to rape Palestinian captives there, according to Israeli analyst Shaiel Ben-Ephraim.
Nova Media reported on April 20 that Ben-Ephraim spoke to two guards who said “one had seen this happen and said it was too awful to talk about. The other said that he had heard about it from others and believed it was true.”
Sde Teiman prison gained global notoriety in 2025 after footage of soldiers gang-raping a captive in 2024 was leaked.
The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) has collected harrowing testimonies from hundreds of Palestinian prisoners in detention and from those who have been released. Women, children, doctors, journalists and other civilians told PCHR that they had been subjected to severe forms of torture and ill-treatment, including brutal beatings, prolonged sleep deprivation, starvation, deliberate medical neglect and sexual violence, including rape. They were held in overcrowded and unsanitary conditions, and denied access to lawyers, family members and the International Committee of the Red Cross.
Janet Parker reports from Boorloo/Perth that the protest, organised by Friends of Palestine WA on April 17, heard from Palestinian activist Hiba Farra.
Farra recounted how Palestinian prisoners keep themselves alive. “In a dark cell, a middle aged man pictures the baby that once was, and is now a grown man he’s never met. Yet, he calls him Baba … In a dark cell, a pregnant women presses her palm to her stomach, whispering to a child not yet born ‘Forgive me, for the sky you will not see; for the sun filtered through iron bars; for the lullabies that echo against concrete instead of against open air, and still life insists on being lived”.
These are the hostages, our hostages; our political prisoners; not numbers ... and when the world looks away, darkness learns to grow teeth.”
“As if stealing land was not enough; as if they must also lay claim to flesh, to breath, to eyesight, to light. When the world forgets, illness enters quietly, untreated, unanswered, a second sentence written into a fragile body.”
Markela Panegryes reports more than 300 people attended the rally in Kaurna Yerta/Adelaide on April 19. Speakers from Australian Friends of Palestine Association, Students for Palestine and the Adelaide Campaign Against Racism and Fascism condemned the systemic torture of Palestinian prisoners, and called for their liberation. They also called for support for the Global Sumud Flotilla.
Highlights of the protest included a performance of the lullaby Together for Palestine by the newly-formed Creatives for Palestine Choir, and a theatrical procession dramatising the horrors of the new Israeli death penalty law.
Zebedee Parkes reports that up to 1000 people marched on Gadigal Country/Sydney after hearing a Palestinian women describe the trauma prisoners are forced to endure.
