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US and Canada act to suppress Palestinian prisoner rights group Samidoun
The United States has imposed sanctions against the Palestinian prisoner support network Samidoun ( https://samidoun.net/ )
Plus: Not In Our Name video, 1m 22s
Plus: Not In Our Name video, 1m 22s
The US sanctions were imposed in coordination with the Canadian government, which on Tuesday designated Samidoun as a “terrorist entity”.
Canada said the group “has close links and advances the interests of” the PFLP, which is also listed as a “terrorist” organisation in the country.
On its website, Samidoun – also known as the Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network – described itself as “an international network of organizers and activists working to build solidarity with Palestinian prisoners in their struggle for freedom”.
“We work to raise awareness and provide resources about Palestinian political prisoners, their conditions, their demands, and their work for freedom for themselves, their fellow prisoners, and their homeland,” it said.
Pro-Israel groups across North America and Europe have been pushing to list Samidoun as a “terrorist” group for years.
But the organisation came under renewed scrutiny in recent months during mass protests in Canada, the US and elsewhere against Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip, which has killed more than 42,200 Palestinians in the besieged enclave since early October 2023.
Just weeks into the Israeli military’s bombardment of Gaza late last year, Germany – a staunch ally of Israel – banned Samidoun after it said the group disseminated “anti-Israel and anti-Jewish propaganda” and “glorified” the Palestinian group Hamas.
In a statement at that time, Samidoun rejected the German ban as an attempt “to repress dissent with the full force of the state”.
“This attack should be of serious concern to all who carry out political work, especially for Palestinian liberation,” the group said.
On Tuesday, the US also designated a Canadian citizen it said serves as a member of the PFLP’s leadership abroad and helps raise money for the group.
The US sanctions freeze the targeted individual’s and organisation’s assets in the country and prevent any US citizens or entities from doing business with them.
-
About Samidoun
Samidoun: Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network is an international network of organizers and activists working to build solidarity with Palestinian prisoners in their struggle for freedom. Samidoun developed out of the September-October 2011 hunger strike of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails, seeing a need for a dedicated network to support Palestinian prisoners. We work to raise awareness and provide resources about Palestinian political prisoners, their conditions, their demands, and their work for freedom for themselves, their fellow prisoners, and their homeland. We also work to organize campaigns to make political change and advocate for Palestinian prisoners’ rights and freedoms.
Samidoun seeks to achieve justice for Palestinian prisoners through events, activities, resources, delegations, research and information-sharing, as well as building bridges with the prisoners’ movement in Palestine. We seek to amplify the voices of Palestinian prisoners, former prisoners, prisoners’ families, and Palestinian advocates for justice and human rights by translating, sharing and distributing news, interviews and materials from Palestine.
We work to organize annually for April 17, the Day of Solidarity with Palestinian Political Prisoners, organizing rallies, events and actions and distributing news and alerts about actions around the world marking April 17.
Palestinian prisoners are on the front lines of the Palestinian struggle for liberation on a daily basis. In the jails of occupation, Palestinian prisoners confront the oppressor and the occupier, and put their bodies and lives on the line to continue their people’s struggle to achieve justice and freedom for the land and people of Palestine. Within the prisons, the Palestinian prisoners’ movement engages in political struggle – demanding their rights, securing advances, and serving as leaders to the entire Palestinian movement, inside and outside Palestine. The Israeli occupation has criminalized all forms of Palestinian existence and Palestinian resistance – from peaceful mass demonstrations to armed struggle to simply refusing to be silent and invisible as a Palestinian. Palestinian prisoners are men and women – and children – from every part of Palestine, from every family. Their absence is keenly felt in the homes, communities, villages, towns, labour, women’s and student organizations from which they were taken by the occupation. They suffer torture, isolation, coercive interrogation, denial of family and lawyers’ visits, on a daily basis. And it is their hunger strikes, their calls to the world, their unity and solidarity, and their continued leadership in the Palestinian movement that must inspire us daily and remind us of our responsibility to take action.
Samidoun also stands in solidarity with Arab and international political prisoners, and, in particular, political prisoners in the United States, Canada and Europe targeted for their work with liberation struggles and freedom movements, including Arab and Palestinian movements, Native and Indigenous liberation and sovereignty struggles, Puerto Rican independentistas, Black liberation organizers, Latino and Chicano activists and many others targeted by racism, colonialism, and oppression, and we recognize the fundamental connections between imprisonment, racism, colonialism, and the criminalization of immigrants, refugees and migrants. We demand the freedom of Georges Ibrahim Abdallah, jailed for over 35 years in France, for his commitment to the Palestinian struggle.
Building solidarity with Palestinian prisoners is, indeed, a responsibility. Palestinian prisoners are at the center of the struggle for freedom and justice in Palestine – they represent the imprisonment of a people and a nation. The Palestinian prisoners’ movement has always been at the center of the Palestinian liberation movement and remains so today. Palestinian prisoners stand and struggle on the front lines daily for return and liberation for all of Palestine and all Palestinians. The Canadian and U.S. governments are deeply complicit and directly implicated in the ongoing occupation of Palestine and the crimes of the Israeli state. Rather than standing for human rights, they enable, fund, and support occupation, apartheid, mass imprisonment, land confiscation, dispossession and settlement-building. In response, it is our responsibility to create grassroots accountability, raise awareness, and take action to those Palestinian prisoners who daily struggle for the freedom of their homeland – and the freedom of the oppressed of the world.
Samidoun chapters, affiliates and links around the world:
Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network
Samidoun Occupied Palestine
Samidoun Gothenburg (Sweden)
Samidoun Stockholm (Sweden)
Samidoun Malmo (Sweden)
Samidoun España
Collectif Palestine Vaincra (France)
Samidoun Région Parisienne
Plate-forme Charleroi-Palestine
Samidoun Netherlands
Samidoun Greece
Samidoun Deutschland
Samidoun Hungary
Samidoun Toronto
Samidoun Vancouver
Samidoun NY/NJ
Samidoun Albuquerque
Samidoun Brasil
Samidoun Iran
ACTA (France)
Anti-Imperialist Action Ottawa
Center for Study and Preservation of Palestine – Portland
HIRAK: Palestinian Youth Mobilization (Germany)
Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network has chapters and affiliates in the United States, Canada, Germany, Britain, France, Sweden, the Netherlands, Belgium, Greece, Spain, Palestine and Lebanon and we work with groups around the world. Would you like to form a local chapter or become an affiliate? Contact us at samidoun [at] samidoun.net
Canada said the group “has close links and advances the interests of” the PFLP, which is also listed as a “terrorist” organisation in the country.
On its website, Samidoun – also known as the Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network – described itself as “an international network of organizers and activists working to build solidarity with Palestinian prisoners in their struggle for freedom”.
“We work to raise awareness and provide resources about Palestinian political prisoners, their conditions, their demands, and their work for freedom for themselves, their fellow prisoners, and their homeland,” it said.
Pro-Israel groups across North America and Europe have been pushing to list Samidoun as a “terrorist” group for years.
But the organisation came under renewed scrutiny in recent months during mass protests in Canada, the US and elsewhere against Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip, which has killed more than 42,200 Palestinians in the besieged enclave since early October 2023.
Just weeks into the Israeli military’s bombardment of Gaza late last year, Germany – a staunch ally of Israel – banned Samidoun after it said the group disseminated “anti-Israel and anti-Jewish propaganda” and “glorified” the Palestinian group Hamas.
In a statement at that time, Samidoun rejected the German ban as an attempt “to repress dissent with the full force of the state”.
“This attack should be of serious concern to all who carry out political work, especially for Palestinian liberation,” the group said.
On Tuesday, the US also designated a Canadian citizen it said serves as a member of the PFLP’s leadership abroad and helps raise money for the group.
The US sanctions freeze the targeted individual’s and organisation’s assets in the country and prevent any US citizens or entities from doing business with them.
-
About Samidoun
Samidoun: Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network is an international network of organizers and activists working to build solidarity with Palestinian prisoners in their struggle for freedom. Samidoun developed out of the September-October 2011 hunger strike of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails, seeing a need for a dedicated network to support Palestinian prisoners. We work to raise awareness and provide resources about Palestinian political prisoners, their conditions, their demands, and their work for freedom for themselves, their fellow prisoners, and their homeland. We also work to organize campaigns to make political change and advocate for Palestinian prisoners’ rights and freedoms.
Samidoun seeks to achieve justice for Palestinian prisoners through events, activities, resources, delegations, research and information-sharing, as well as building bridges with the prisoners’ movement in Palestine. We seek to amplify the voices of Palestinian prisoners, former prisoners, prisoners’ families, and Palestinian advocates for justice and human rights by translating, sharing and distributing news, interviews and materials from Palestine.
We work to organize annually for April 17, the Day of Solidarity with Palestinian Political Prisoners, organizing rallies, events and actions and distributing news and alerts about actions around the world marking April 17.
Palestinian prisoners are on the front lines of the Palestinian struggle for liberation on a daily basis. In the jails of occupation, Palestinian prisoners confront the oppressor and the occupier, and put their bodies and lives on the line to continue their people’s struggle to achieve justice and freedom for the land and people of Palestine. Within the prisons, the Palestinian prisoners’ movement engages in political struggle – demanding their rights, securing advances, and serving as leaders to the entire Palestinian movement, inside and outside Palestine. The Israeli occupation has criminalized all forms of Palestinian existence and Palestinian resistance – from peaceful mass demonstrations to armed struggle to simply refusing to be silent and invisible as a Palestinian. Palestinian prisoners are men and women – and children – from every part of Palestine, from every family. Their absence is keenly felt in the homes, communities, villages, towns, labour, women’s and student organizations from which they were taken by the occupation. They suffer torture, isolation, coercive interrogation, denial of family and lawyers’ visits, on a daily basis. And it is their hunger strikes, their calls to the world, their unity and solidarity, and their continued leadership in the Palestinian movement that must inspire us daily and remind us of our responsibility to take action.
Samidoun also stands in solidarity with Arab and international political prisoners, and, in particular, political prisoners in the United States, Canada and Europe targeted for their work with liberation struggles and freedom movements, including Arab and Palestinian movements, Native and Indigenous liberation and sovereignty struggles, Puerto Rican independentistas, Black liberation organizers, Latino and Chicano activists and many others targeted by racism, colonialism, and oppression, and we recognize the fundamental connections between imprisonment, racism, colonialism, and the criminalization of immigrants, refugees and migrants. We demand the freedom of Georges Ibrahim Abdallah, jailed for over 35 years in France, for his commitment to the Palestinian struggle.
Building solidarity with Palestinian prisoners is, indeed, a responsibility. Palestinian prisoners are at the center of the struggle for freedom and justice in Palestine – they represent the imprisonment of a people and a nation. The Palestinian prisoners’ movement has always been at the center of the Palestinian liberation movement and remains so today. Palestinian prisoners stand and struggle on the front lines daily for return and liberation for all of Palestine and all Palestinians. The Canadian and U.S. governments are deeply complicit and directly implicated in the ongoing occupation of Palestine and the crimes of the Israeli state. Rather than standing for human rights, they enable, fund, and support occupation, apartheid, mass imprisonment, land confiscation, dispossession and settlement-building. In response, it is our responsibility to create grassroots accountability, raise awareness, and take action to those Palestinian prisoners who daily struggle for the freedom of their homeland – and the freedom of the oppressed of the world.
Samidoun chapters, affiliates and links around the world:
Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network
Samidoun Occupied Palestine
Samidoun Gothenburg (Sweden)
Samidoun Stockholm (Sweden)
Samidoun Malmo (Sweden)
Samidoun España
Collectif Palestine Vaincra (France)
Samidoun Région Parisienne
Plate-forme Charleroi-Palestine
Samidoun Netherlands
Samidoun Greece
Samidoun Deutschland
Samidoun Hungary
Samidoun Toronto
Samidoun Vancouver
Samidoun NY/NJ
Samidoun Albuquerque
Samidoun Brasil
Samidoun Iran
ACTA (France)
Anti-Imperialist Action Ottawa
Center for Study and Preservation of Palestine – Portland
HIRAK: Palestinian Youth Mobilization (Germany)
Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network has chapters and affiliates in the United States, Canada, Germany, Britain, France, Sweden, the Netherlands, Belgium, Greece, Spain, Palestine and Lebanon and we work with groups around the world. Would you like to form a local chapter or become an affiliate? Contact us at samidoun [at] samidoun.net
For more information:
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/10/15/...
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The National Lawyers Guild strongly condemns the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) designation of Samidoun as “a sham charity that serves as an international fundraiser for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) terrorist organization,” and the listing of long-time Palestinian- Canadian activist Khaled Barakat “as associated with terrorism.”
Done in coordination with the government of Canada, this designation will have a broad chilling effect on Palestine solidarity work in North America. Above all, it is designed to disrupt the unprecedented global tidal wave of support for the liberation of Palestine. The crack down on our constitutionally protected speech is a worrisome development at any moment in time but in particular right now as social movements confront the US-backed Israeli genocide in Gaza, the Israeli war on Lebanon, and the general global trend toward fascism.
The National Lawyers Guild (NLG) has a proud legacy of defending first amendment rights, standing against the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) and Cold War repression during the McCarthy era. From representing the Hollywood Ten and the Rosenbergs to supporting the Black Liberation Movement and Landback struggles waged by Indigenous peoples, the NLG has fought tirelessly against government repression—an effort we continue today as we confront the latest iteration of McCarthyism with claims of terrorism being the new anti-communism. Established in 1937, the National Lawyers Guild (NLG) is the nation’s oldest and largest progressive bar association and was the first one in the US to be racially integrated. Our mission is to use law for the people, uniting lawyers, law students, legal workers, and jailhouse lawyers to function as an effective force in the service of the people by valuing human rights and the rights of ecosystems over property interests.
As the beating heart of the international anti-colonial and anti-imperial struggle, the Palestine solidarity movement has faced violent repression in North America since its inception. A recent report by the Center for Constitutional Rights demonstrates how U.S. antiterrorism legislation evolved to oppose Palestinian liberation struggles, as early as the 1960s. The first U.S. federal mention of “terrorism” in 1969 specifically targeted humanitarian aid to Palestinians, establishing a pattern of associating Palestinian life and Palestinian existence with terrorism. Subsequent laws and policies, including the first terrorism blacklist and the unique congressional designation of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) as a terrorist group in 1987 reinforced this connection. Financial sanctions against Palestinian factions were instituted in response to Israeli demands, and Palestinians were a major focus of post-1995 anti-terrorism provisions. This historical context highlights pre-existing bias against Palestine solidarity organizations within U.S. anti-terrorism legislation. It also reflects ongoing anti-Palestinian racism on the part of the U.S. government and its allies, which is used to drum up support for the genocide of Palestinians; we reject this racist genocidal project and stand in solidarity with the Palestinian liberation movement.
The unjust targeting of Samidoun mirrors the Los Angeles 8 case, litigated by NLG and other organizations. In 1987, eight Palestinian and Palestine solidarity activists were brutally arrested by the FBI in Los Angeles and held in jail for three weeks before being released. They too were wrongly accused of association with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and their so-called crimes were distributing Palestinian magazines and fundraising for humanitarian relief. Mainstream media relentlessly called them terrorists, causing a chilling effect across left social movements throughout North America. Shortly thereafter, the National Lawyers Guild and other organizations filed a lawsuit against the US government for its unconstitutional arrests and bogus charges. Twenty years later, Judge Bruce Einhorn dismissed the lawsuit, calling the government’s actions in the prolonged case “an embarrassment to the rule of law.”
The use of the law to criminalize and delegitimize freedom fighters from Indigenous, Black, Puerto Rican and other liberation struggles has a long history in this country. In the years following 9/11, US anti-terrorism and related laws have increasingly targeted not just Palestinian solidarity organizing, but all social movements in the US. The US government is now using anti-terrorism legislation to target the Indigenous landback movement and environmental justice movements, and following the George Floyd and Breonna Taylor uprisings, anti-police brutality activists challenging Cop City in Atlanta face RICO charges. In 2021, Jessica Reznicek, an environmental activist, was imprisoned for “sabotaging” construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline. She received an eight-year sentence, which included a terrorism enhancement.
Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network is an international coalition of activists dedicated to supporting Palestinian prisoners in their fight for freedom, stemming from the 2011 hunger strike of prisoners in Israeli jails, and has no ties to any so-called designated terrorists. The organization aims to raise awareness of the conditions, rights and demands of Palestinian political prisoners. Palestinian prisoners are at the heart of the broader struggle for Palestinian national liberation, confronting Israeli oppression daily and leading the movement for justice. The number of Palestinian held captive in colonial jails has expanded exponentially during the ongoing genocide, with close to 11,000 Palestinian imprisoned since October 7th, highlighting the importance of Samidoun’s work.
The National Lawyers Guild is outraged by the expanded use of anti-terrorism laws to attack social movements. Like the L.A. 8, this targeting of Samidoun, Khaled Barakat and the Palestinian liberation movement is also an embarrassment to the rule of law, and we call on all peoples of conscience to stand with us as we defend human rights advocates and social movements that practice their constitutional right to freedom of speech, against the genocide of the Palestinian people. We must fight back before it is too late. An attack on one is an attack on all!