Palestine Solidarity Group (Vancouver)
P.O. Box 75072
8165 Main Street
Vancouver, B.C.
V5X 4V7
For immediate release
December 16, 2002
The Palestine Solidarity Group of Vancouver strongly condemns Israel’s arrest and detention of activist Jaggi Singh on the spurious grounds of national “security”. Singh was denied entry and detained upon his arrival in Tel Aviv on a flight from Montreal. He had been traveling to the region in order to witness and report on the reality of the illegal Israeli Occupation.
The Israeli regime routinely uses mass arrests, torture and targeted assassination of Palestinian activists to repress the legitimate resistance of a people facing systematic dispossession and colonization. The case of Jaggi Singh illustrates that they will also use state repression and violation of the basic human right to move and travel freely to silence international solidarity activists.
The only threat to Israel’s “security” that activists like Singh present is the threat of reporting the truth to the world about the oppression of the Palestinian people. That oppression –which takes many forms including shoot-to-kill curfews, home demolitions, settlement expansions, military checkpoints, as well as denial of rights to the Palestinian minority within Israel –is justly compared with that endured under the hated apartheid regime that existed in South Africa.
Jaggi Singh has long faced repression from the Canadian government for his outspoken advocacy of social justice, dating back to his 1997 “pre-emptive” arrest at the University of British Columbia the day before major anti-APEC protests on the campus. The Palestine Solidarity Group condemns the governments that would silence Jaggi Singh and salutes his vocal and courageous defense of the Palestinian cause.
Palestine Solidarity Group (Vancouver)
http://www.palsolidaritygrp.org/ palsolidarity@yahoo.com