International human rights groups published a joint letter on Monday, March 28, appealing the United Nations to address the administrative detention of Palestinian-French human rights activist Salah Hammouri by Israel. The groups also called upon Israel to immediately release Hammouri from administrative detention and stop the ongoing harassment and persecution against him. 36-year-old Hammouri is a well-known human rights activist, lawyer and member of the Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association. He is a former political prisoner and has spent over 10 years in Israeli prisons for his resistance and political activities against the occupation.
The signatories to the letter include the Association France Palestine Solidarite, Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies, Palestinian Human Rights Council, Al-Haq and the Platform of French NGOs for Palestine. In their letter, the groups state that “Salah Hammouri’s case highlights the Israeli occupation and apartheid regime’s widespread and systematic practice of illegal population transfer and demographic manipulation, as manifested through laws, policies, and practices, to maintain their institutionalized regime of racial domination and oppression over the Palestinian people.” It adds that “his case was highlighted in Amnesty International’s landmark report demonstrating Israel’s crimes of apartheid, specifically the illegal practice of forcible population transfer, deportations, and demographic engineering.”