News & Events

We regret to announce the cancellation of today's talk in Galway with Tala Nasir from Addameer. Due to the ongoing escalation in Palestine and the recent closure of Jordan's airspace, our guest speaker's flights were affected, leaving her unable to travel to Ireland in time. Despite our best efforts, we have no choice but to cancel today's talk. We apologise for any inconvenience this may have caused and hope you can hear Tala at one of her other speaking events in Ireland over the coming week.

The Irish Centre for Human Rights at University of Galway is honoured to host an enlightening event titled "Palestinian Political Prisoners in a Time of Genocide with Tala Nasir of Addameer" on 15th April 2024 from 6:00 PM to 7:30 PM at the O'Donoghue Theatre (The Bank of Ireland Theatre). The event will feature Tala Nasir, a distinguished human rights lawyer from Addameer, the Palestinian Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association.

Come along to hear first-hand from Tala about her own experiences, the work of Addameer, and the Israeli prison system's role as a central plank of the architecture of Apartheid – especially since October 7th when Israel began a renewed campaign of mass arrests in the West Bank. There are now almost 10,000 Palestinians, including 200 children, in Israel's prisons – more than double the figure this time last year.

Since the beginning of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories in 1967, it has maintained a mass detention policy targeting, among others, human rights and political activists, children, and elected politicians. Some 800,000 Palestinians have been detained by the Israeli military. Israel's torture, ill-treatment, and other violations of human rights and international law in regards to political prisoners is widespread and systematic. As of March 2024, some 9,400 Palestinian political detainees are being held in Israeli prisons, 200 of which are children; almost 3,700 are administrative detainees, indefinitely interned without charge or trial.

The issue of prisoners is one that is often overlooked in discussions around the Palestine-Israel issue. Yet the prisoners issue goes to the very heart of Israel's Apartheid policies – the decapitation of political movements, the criminalisation and 'securitisation' of young people who resist occupation, not to mention the psychological and traumatic effects detention and abuse has on young people who go through the prison system. The treatment of prisoners has worsened significantly since the beginning of Israel's genocidal war on the people of Gaza, with Israel instituting a policy of enforced hunger and medical negligence against detainees. At least 11 people have died in detention since October.

Even NGOs who work with prisoners are targets of Israeli repression; in October 2021 the Israeli government declared Addameer, along with several other Palestinian civil society organisations, to be 'terrorist entities' – a designation rejected by the Irish government and other European Union countries."