Ala’ Jaradat spoke in Portland, OR on November 20, 2009 in the concluding event of his US tour focusing on Palestinian political prisoners, and particularly on administrative detention. The event was sponsored locally by the Al-Nakba Awareness Project and Al-Awda Oregon, as part of the national tour organized by USPCN and the Palestine Solidarity Group – Chicago, and took place at Portland State University. The event was filmed by pdxjustice Media Productions.
Ala Jaradat, the program manager of Addameer Prisoners’ Support and Human Rights Association in the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah, and a former Palestinian political prisoner, traveled across the US from November 3-20, 2009, sharing his experiences campaigning for the freedom and rights of political detainees and actively working against the use of torture, arbitrary detention, isolation, and other forms of political persecution and repression.
His U.S. tour traveled to Chicago, IL; Minneapolis, MN; Milwaukee, WI; San Francisco, CA; Youngstown and Columbus, OH; New York, NY; Detroit, MI; Philadelphia, PA; College Park, MD and Washington, DC, focusing on Addameer’s campaign against administrative detention as well as U.S. responsibility for Palestinian political prisoners. The $3 billion dollars of annual U.S. aid to Israel helps fund Israeli prisons and detention centers where 8,100 Palestinian prisoners — including 60 women, 390 children, and 550 administrative detainees held without charge — are imprisoned in substandard conditions and subject to torture.
The US Palestinian Community Network plans to follow up on the tour through continued advocacy to support Palestinian political prisoners and ensure their freedom, and continued work with the local groups across the country who made this tour successful – in fact, enthusiasm for the tour was so great that Ala Jaradat’s trip to the US was extended by one week in order to accommodate additional speaking events, illustrating the interest in the critically important voices of Palestinian political prisoners.
