Palestinian prisoners demands

Palestinian prisoners demands

The demands of the prisoners as presented to the prisons authority by the Unified National and Islamic Leadership were as follows: 

First: Visits

1- Removal of glass barriers.
2- Increasing the visiting time to one hour.
3- Allowing children to visit.
4- Allowing all prisoners’ relatives to visit.
5- Doubling the visits for brothers and sisters of the prisoners.
6- Allowing visits without the barbed wire (private visits).
7- Allowing visits of relatives of the second and third degrees.
8- Holding prisoners in prisons close to their homes.
9- Detaining prisoners, who are first degree relatives, in the same prison.
10- Allowing the entry of clothes and other essentials to prisoners.
11- Allowing prisoners to take photographs with family and children.
12- Allowing prisoners from Arab countries four-hour visits every six months.
13- Allowing photos to be brought in without a limit on numbers.
14- Allowing traditional dresses, head covers, hats, watches and blankets to be brought in.
15- Allowing family visits on Fridays.
16- Allowing visitors in as soon as they arrive without delaying them in the prison or at roadblocks.
17- Allowing visitors to buy from the canteen without imposing limits.
18- Providing different types of soft drinks and not only Sprite.
19- Allowing prisoners to meet their visitors in their normal clothes, not limited by color or design.
20- Allowing handcrafts, made by prisoners, out of the prison.
21- Allowing the entry of all kinds of cigarettes, audio and video cassettes and video games during visits

Second: Phone calls

1- Installing payphones in various parts of the prison or allowing prisoners to own and use mobile phones.
2- Allowing the prisoners' representative to call organizations, lawyers and the PA ministry of prisoners.
3- Removing electronic interference devices because they cause cancer

Third: Food

1- Preparing a menu that includes a comprehensive variety of food products and allowances to each prisoner and handing it to the representatives of prisoners.
2- Changing the vegetable and fruit basket and stopping the practice of reducing the quantities.
3- Allowing prisoners to buy their own fruits, vegetables, meats and fish every month.
4- Allowing prisoners to cook their own foods according to their customs and religious teachings.
5- Reopening kitchens which have been withdrawn from prisoners.
6- Replacing cooking materials with new ones.
7- Opening a bakery to be run by security prisoners and allowing bread to be brought in during visits. 

Four: Medical treatment

1- Developing prison clinics to receive emergency cases especially in Nafha and the presence of a doctor on call throughout the week.
2- Allowing a prisoner to work in the clinic.
3- Carrying out necessary operations on prisoners who need them.
4- Allowing private doctors and facilitating their entry.
5- Extending the list of specialties of doctors visiting the prison to include all specialties.
6- Allowing teeth implants at the prisoner's expense and by his private doctor.
7- Allowing organ transplants for prisoners who have been waiting for years for kidney and cornea transplants and providing artificial limbs to those prisoners who need them.
8- Allowing prisoners to buy mattresses, cushions, medical shoes and some medicines from the prison shop.
9- Solving the problems of the Ramlah hospital.
10- Giving each prisoner a comprehensive health checkup at least once a year.
11- Giving each prisoner an eyesight test once every six month and providing the necessary glasses and contact lenses as well as treating eye problems including cornea transplants.
12- Allowing prisoners to have equipment for measuring blood pressure and sugar level if they need them

Five: Numbers

1- Ending the policy of individual and group solitary confinement and returning those in isolatoin to the prisons. 

Seven: University education

1- Allowing prisoners [to enroll in correspondence courses] in Arab and foreign universities.
2- Ending the policy of punishing the prisoner by denying him/her to complete his/her education.
3- Allowing newspapers and magazines into the prison without delays.
4- Allowing prisoners to buy electronic dictionaries other than Al-Huda dictionary.
5- Providing each room with a computer and not students only.
6- Providing study rooms for students and re-opening libraries.
7- Allowing all stationary.
8- Allowing photocopying of papers

Eight: The canteen

1- Allowing buying food from Arab sources.
2- [Products sold in the prison canteen] should not be subject to 17% VAT.
3- Canteens in all prisons should have one price list.
4- Ending the limitations on the brands sold in the canteen.
5- Forming a committee to investigate the legality of imposing VAT on products sold in the canteen and to check whether or not prisoners benefit from the profits made.

Nine: Movement within the ward and strolling

1- Reinstating stroll hours to 4 hours as before.
2- Reinstating room and ward visits all day.
3- Leaving room doors open.
4- Reinstating "stroll by permit", "allowing prisoners to take permit for a stroll any time of the day for sick prisoners, prisoners with sentences over 10 years and special needs prisoners"
5- Allowing university students to choose suitable times for their stroll.
6- Allowing prisoners' representatives and prisoners' committee to visit wards and prisoners during the stroll time to follow up prisoner problems without this being subject to the mood of the officer. The presence of the prisoners' representative during visits.
7- Allowing prisoners to leave their rooms to stroll or return to their rooms every half an hour.
8- Allowing movement within one ward without putting limits on hours or time.
9- Installing water taps in wards.
10- Reinstating weekly cleaning.
11- Reinstating a water hose to the yard.
12- Designating the hours 15:00-17:00 and 17:00-19:00 for prisoner strolling.
13- Allowing working prisoners to have their stroll until 20:00.
14- Stopping the transfer of prisoners to other prisons before two years of their imprisonment unless they ask for such a transfer.
15- Ending the state where prisoners are continuously moved between prisons.
16- Allowing the movement of Friday preachers between wards.
17- Allowing parties, debates and competitions during the stroll as before.
18- Freedom of movement between rooms without restrictions.
19- Allowing the practice of karate during physical training hours

Ten: Public and private appliances

1- Allowing prisoners to buy the following: a reading lamp, electronic dictionary other than Al-Huda, electric shaver and a fan.
2- Installing extractor fans and air conditioning in rooms and wards.
3- Installing air conditioners in visiting and waiting rooms.
4- Providing a kettle.
5- Providing an electric pan for each room.
6- Providing a small fridge for each room.
7- Installing a radio antenna.
8- Allowing leather coats.
9- Allowing trouser belts.
10- Allowing skipping ropes.
11- Allowing cameras in all wards and taking group photographs.
12- Allowing a fruit knife for each room

Eleven: Searches

1- Stopping hand searches of prisoners and visitors and depending on scan searches instead.
2- Stopping the search of children under 14 years of age.
3- Stopping strip searches of prisoners.
4- Stopping night searches and the practices of the "mitsada" unit and disbanding the unit immediately.
5- Stopping the handcuffing of prisoners during searches.
6- Stopping the confiscation and damage of personal belongings during the searches.
7- Stopping the searches while going out for a stroll, going to prayer or going for physical training.
8- Conducting a security search only once a day where prisoners are not forced out during the search.
9- Designating the stroll time as the only time for the search.
10- General search once every 6 months

Twelve: Work utilities

1- Increasing the number of workers who work in the wards and other work areas.
2- Reinstating the kitchens, the sewing workshop and the laundry and allowing security prisoners to work in them.
3- Allowing workers who work in the wards to stay until 22:30 and allowing strolling until 19:00.
4- Reinstating the worker in the yard and adding a working store as well as a general store.
5- Allowing a prisoner to work in the clinic.
6- Reinstating strolling for workers.
7- Increasing the pay for workers.
8- Adding one other worker in the library.
9- Allowing a worker to repair electrical appliances in each ward as before.
10- Providing hair dressing equipment by the administration and changing the equipment every six months

Thirteen: Counting

1- Permitting prisoners who sleep in the upper part of the bunk bed to set in bed to be counted rather than get down.
2- It should suffice for prisoners in the toilet or the bathroom to raise their hands to be counted, while prisoners should refrain from using the facilities at count time except in urgent circumstances

Fourteen: Transfer vehicles and waiting rooms:

1- Allowing passengers to carry canned food, drinks, etc.
2- Leaving to the transfer vehicles immediately without waiting at the waiting rooms.
3- Adding cushions to the vehicle’s seats.
4- Tying each prisoner alone.
5- Allowing the prisoners’ representative to receive new arrivals to the prison at time of arrival of the transfer vehicles.
6- Improving the waiting rooms in each of Askalan, Ramlah and Saba’.
7- Lifting the black color off the windows of the transfer vehicles

Fifteen: General demands:

1- Returning canned foods, cassettes and all what was confiscated in the prisons of Askalan and Nafha following the events.
2- Allowing handicraft work and buying their needs from the canteen or during visits.
3- Removing Asbestos from the windows and improving ventilation in rooms and wards.
4- Returning the prison rations of detergents, toothpastes toothbrushes and others.
5- Providing regulations of each prison in Arabic language.
6- Increasing the number of TV channels.
7- Returning wooden boards to beds, changing them each year.
8- Allowing only policewomen in female wards.
9- Improving incarceration conditions of minors.
10- Ending the forced transfer of prisoners from one jail to another.
11- Removing a bed from each room.
12- Halting penalties against prisoners held for “serious charges” and allowing them to work in various prison wards.
13- Applying the Geneva Convention and human rights and treating us as POWs.
14- Reinstating use of buses in transferring prisoners.
15- Allowing visits on religious occasions.
16- Doubling visits during feasts.
17- Allowing prisoners to bring out their written material, poems, books, memoirs, etc during visits, whether.
18- Determining the life sentence and endorsing release after elapse of two thirds of the sentence.
19- Non-intervention in Friday Khutba (sermon) and not to punish the Khatib (preacher) for anything he says during the Khutba.
20- Allowing books with hard covers and not snatching them.
21- Separating toilets from bathrooms in the cells.
22- Fitting artificial limbs to those in need. 

The memo was signed by the national and Islamic unified leadership of the hunger strike.