A new report by a Canadian human rights group has exposed the harsh and discriminatory treatment of Palestinian child detainees by the Israeli occupation in its military court system.
The report, titled “Heartbreaking Disparity: Child Detainees in Canada vs. Israel”, compares the legal rights and protections of Palestinian children in the Israeli-occupied West Bank to those of Jewish settler children living in the same territory and of child detainees in Canada.
The report finds that Palestinian children are routinely subjected to physical and psychological abuse, coerced confessions, unfair trials, and prolonged imprisonment, while Jewish settler children and Canadian children enjoy much more lenient and humane treatment.
The report, released on June 14 by Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME), is based on a systematic analysis of the laws and practices governing child detention in both countries.
It also draws on testimonies from former Palestinian child detainees, human rights organizations, and legal experts. The report reveals that Israel operates a dual system of law enforcement in the West Bank, applying civil law to Jewish settlers and military law to Palestinians. This results in a stark contrast in how children are treated by the authorities, depending on their ethnicity and nationality.
For example, the report shows that while child detainees in Canada have the right to a guardian or lawyer during interrogation, Israeli military law does not provide the same right to Palestinian children. In fact, Palestinian children are often arrested at night, blindfolded, handcuffed, and taken away from their families without being informed of their rights or the charges against them. They are then interrogated without legal counsel, sometimes for hours or days, and subjected to physical violence, threats, insults, and intimidation.
According to the report, 75% of Palestinian children detained by the Israeli occupation reported experiencing some form of physical violence during arrest or interrogation.
The report also highlights that while Canada imprisons children as a last resort, the Israeli military court system imprisons children as the default sanction to punish Palestinian children.
The report cites statistics from Defence for Children International – Palestine (DCIP), which show that between 2015 and 2019, Israel detained an average of 577 Palestinian children per year, of whom 72% were sentenced to imprisonment. The average sentence length for Palestinian children was 7.6 months, while the average sentence length for Jewish settler children was 3.5 months. Moreover, Palestinian children are often held in prisons inside Israel, in violation of international law, which makes it difficult for their families to visit them.
The report concludes that the Israeli treatment of Palestinian child detainees amounts to a grave violation of their human rights and dignity, and calls on the Canadian government to take immediate action to uphold their rights.
The top recommendation of the report is that Canada appoints a Special Envoy to monitor and report on the human rights situation of Palestinian children in the occupied West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza.
The report also urges Canada to condemn the Israeli systemic abuses of Palestinian children, and demand an end to torture, house arrests, solitary confinement, administrative detention, and the prosecution of Palestinian children in military courts.
Thomas Woodley, President of CJPME, said: “Israel’s discriminatory and abusive treatment of Palestinian children in the military court system is clearly out of step with how Canadians expect children should be treated, and completely intolerable. We felt it was necessary to highlight this disparity to make the mistreatment more evident and tangible to Canadians.”
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