Human Rights Organizations Demand the Release of Omani Activists

[Gulf Center for Human Rights logo. Image from gc4hr.org] [Gulf Center for Human Rights logo. Image from gc4hr.org]

Human Rights Organizations Demand the Release of Omani Activists

By : Jadaliyya Reports

[The following statement was originally published by the Gulf Center for Human Rights on 20 February 2013.]

Oman – Release Immediately and Unconditionally all Detainees of Human Rights Defenders and Activists

The undersigned human rights organizations declare their full and complete solidarity with all Omani human rights defenders who are currently in detention, especially those undertaking hunger strikes. Twenty-four defenders and activists (including Basma Al-Kiyumi, Bassima Al-Rajhi, Saeed Al-Hashemi, Hamad Al-Kharusi, and Bassam Abu Qasida) undertook a hunger strike on 9 February 2013 in Samail Central Prison, protesting the delayed ruling on the appeals that they brought to the Supreme Court against the judgments that were passed against them.

Confirmed reports reveal that the conditions of some of the hunger strikers have deteriorated seriously to the point that some are currently at risk of death. Saeed Al-Hashemi was transferred to the Royal Hospital in Muscat, where a neurologist examined him and confirmed that he is in urgent need of physiotherapy or surgery as a result of an injury on his right side sustained when he was beaten by unknown assailants during peaceful protests in Oman in 2011. The same reports reveal that Hamad Al-Kharusi and Bassam Abu Qasida were transferred to the jail`s clinic due to exhaustion caused by their hunger strike.

These human rights defenders were incarcerated following the decisions of the Appeals Court on 5, 12, and 19 December 2012 which upheld sentences of between six months and one year in prison issued against them by the Muscat Court of First Instance in July and August 2012. The defenders were charged with defaming the Sultan, violating the cyber law, unlawful assembly, and disturbing the public order.

The recent series of trials against human rights defenders and activists in Oman started on 31 May 2012, when three human rights defenders - Habiba Al-Hana`i, Ismail Al-Mikbali, and Yaqob Al-Kharusi - were detained while visiting a workers` sit-in. These three defenders had previously established the Omani Group for Human Rights.
The crackdown on rights defenders and democracy activists in Oman escalated when the public prosecutor issued a statement on 4 June 2012 in which he threatened that a lawsuit would be filed against human rights defenders and activists who continued to exercise their right to freedom of expression and to call for reforms, respect for human rights, and the release of detained human rights defenders. This statement was followed by arrests and trials against dozens of activists, including writers, bloggers, human rights defenders, and demonstrators, who were accused of the aforementioned charges.

The undersigned organizations believe that the detention of human rights defenders and activists due solely to their legitimate, peaceful exercise of their rights to free expression and demonstration constitutes a flagrant violation to these basic rights. The organizations are also deeply concerned for the security and safety of human rights defenders and prisoners of conscience who are currently being held in prisons and detention centers in Oman.

The undersigned organizations call on Sultan Qaboos and the Omani government to:

  1. Immediately and unconditionally release all human rights defenders who were detained as a result of their legitimate participation of their rights to freedom of expression and assembly; and drop all charges related to the exercise of these rights;
  2. Take all necessary measures to ensure the physical and psychological integrity and security of all detainees;
  3. Ensure the ability of human rights defenders, activists, and journalists in Oman to carry out their legitimate work freely and without fear of reprisal or judicial harassment.

Moreover, the undersigned organizations call on Omani government to pay special attention to fundamental rights and freedoms guaranteed in the Declaration on the Right and Responsibility of Individuals, Groups and Organs of Society to Promote and Protect Universally Recognized Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, especially Paragraph (a) of Article (5), which reads, "For the purpose of promoting and protecting human rights and fundamental freedoms, everyone has the right, individually and in association with others, at the national and international levels: (a) To meet or assemble peacefully", as well as Paragraph (2) of Article (12), which reads, "2) The State shall take all necessary measures to ensure the protection by the competent authorities of everyone, individually and in association with others, against any violence, threats, retaliation, de facto or de jure adverse discrimination, pressure or any other arbitrary action as a consequence of his or her legitimate exercise of the rights referred to in the present Declaration."

Signatories

  1. Gulf Center for Human Rights.
  2. Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies.
  3. The International Federation for Human Rights.
  4. Damascus Center for Human Rights Studies.
  5. The Arab Organization for Human Rights in Syria.
  6. The Arab Organization for Human Rights.
  7. Palestinian Center for Human Rights – Gaza.
  8. Palestinian Human Rights Organization in Beirut.
  9. Al Haq Center – Palestine.
  10. Amel Association – Lebanon.
  11. Arab Women Organization in Jordan.
  12. Libyan Center for Development and Human Rights.
  13. Bahrain Center for Human Rights.
  14. Bahrain Human Rights Society.
  15. The Palestinian Human Rights Organizations Council.
  16. Amman Center for Human Rights Studies.
  17. Moroccan Association for Human Rights.
  18. Yemen Organization for Defending Rights and Democratic Freedoms.
  19. Mauritanian Association for Human Rights.
  20. Sudanese Organization for Defending Rights and Freedoms.
     
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Past is Present: Settler Colonialism Matters!

On 5-6 March 2011, the Palestine Society at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London will hold its seventh annual conference, "Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine." This year`s conference aims to understand Zionism as a settler colonial project which has, for more than a century, subjected Palestine and Palestinians to a structural and violent form of destruction, dispossession, land appropriation and erasure in the pursuit of a new Jewish Israeli society. By organizing this conference, we hope to reclaim and revive the settler colonial paradigm and to outline its potential to inform and guide political strategy and mobilization.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is often described as unique and exceptional with little resemblance to other historical or ongoing colonial conflicts. Yet, for Zionism, like other settler colonial projects such as the British colonization of Ireland or European settlement of North America, South Africa or Australia, the imperative is to control the land and its resources -- and to displace the original inhabitants. Indeed, as conference keynote speaker Patrick Wolfe, one of the foremost scholars on settler colonialism and professor at La Trobe University in Victoria, Australia, argues, "the logic of this project, a sustained institutional tendency to eliminate the Indigenous population, informs a range of historical practices that might otherwise appear distinct--invasion is a structure not an event."[i]

Therefore, the classification of the Zionist movement as a settler colonial project, and the Israeli state as its manifestation, is not merely intended as a statement on the historical origins of Israel, nor as a rhetorical or polemical device. Rather, the aim is to highlight Zionism`s structural continuities and the ideology which informs Israeli policies and practices in Palestine and toward Palestinians everywhere. Thus, the Nakba -- whether viewed as a spontaneous, violent episode in war, or the implementation of a preconceived master plan -- should be understood as both the precondition for the creation of Israel and the logical outcome of Zionist settlement in Palestine.

Moreover, it is this same logic that sustains the continuation of the Nakba today. As remarked by Benny Morris, “had he [David Ben Gurion] carried out full expulsion--rather than partial--he would have stabilised the State of Israel for generations.”[ii] Yet, plagued by an “instability”--defined by the very existence of the Palestinian nation--Israel continues its daily state practices in its quest to fulfill Zionism’s logic to maximize the amount of land under its control with the minimum number of Palestinians on it. These practices take a painful array of manifestations: aerial and maritime bombardment, massacre and invasion, house demolitions, land theft, identity card confiscation, racist laws and loyalty tests, the wall, the siege on Gaza, cultural appropriation, and the dependence on willing (or unwilling) native collaboration and security arrangements, all with the continued support and backing of imperial power. 

Despite these enduring practices however, the settler colonial paradigm has largely fallen into disuse. As a paradigm, it once served as a primary ideological and political framework for all Palestinian political factions and trends, and informed the intellectual work of committed academics and revolutionary scholars, both Palestinians and Jews.

The conference thus asks where and why the settler colonial paradigm was lost, both in scholarship on Palestine and in politics; how do current analyses and theoretical trends that have arisen in its place address present and historical realities? While acknowledging the creativity of these new interpretations, we must nonetheless ask: when exactly did Palestinian natives find themselves in a "post-colonial" condition? When did the ongoing struggle over land become a "post-conflict" situation? When did Israel become a "post-Zionist" society? And when did the fortification of Palestinian ghettos and reservations become "state-building"?

In outlining settler colonialism as a central paradigm from which to understand Palestine, this conference re-invigorates it as a tool by which to analyze the present situation. In doing so, it contests solutions which accommodate Zionism, and more significantly, builds settler colonialism as a political analysis that can embolden and inform a strategy of active, mutual, and principled Palestinian alignment with the Arab struggle for self-determination, and indigenous struggles in the US, Latin America, Oceania, and elsewhere.

Such an alignment would expand the tools available to Palestinians and their solidarity movement, and reconnect the struggle to its own history of anti-colonial internationalism. At its core, this internationalism asserts that the Palestinian struggle against Zionist settler colonialism can only be won when it is embedded within, and empowered by, the broader Arab movement for emancipation and the indigenous, anti-racist and anti-colonial movement--from Arizona to Auckland.

SOAS Palestine Society invites everyone to join us at what promises to be a significant intervention in Palestine activism and scholarship.

For over 30 years, SOAS Palestine Society has heightened awareness and understanding of the Palestinian people, their rights, culture, and struggle for self-determination, amongst students, faculty, staff, and the broader public. SOAS Palestine society aims to continuously push the frontiers of discourse in an effort to make provocative arguments and to stimulate debate and organizing for justice in Palestine through relevant conferences, and events ranging from the intellectual and political impact of Edward Said`s life and work (2004), international law and the Palestine question (2005), the economy of Palestine and its occupation (2006), the one state (2007), 60 Years of Nakba, 60 Years of Resistance (2009), and most recently, the Left in Palestine (2010).

For more information on the SOAS Palestine Society 7th annual conference, Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine: www.soaspalsoc.org

SOAS Palestine Society Organizing Collective is a group of committed students that has undertaken to organize annual academic conferences on Palestine since 2003.

 


[i] Patrick Wolfe, Settler Colonialism and the Transformation of Anthropology: The Politics and Poetics of an Ethnographic Event, Cassell, London, p. 163

[ii] Interview with Benny Morris, Survival of the Fittest, Haaretz, 9. January 2004, http://cosmos.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/php/art.php?aid=5412