Action Alert

Intensify the Stop G4S campaign in solidarity with Palestinian political prisoners on hunger strike

Take action now to support Palestinian political prisoners and all those who are struggling to end the complicity of G4S in violating their rights.

Action Alert! 

In light of the ongoing hunger strike by Palestinian political prisoners and in response to their demand for intensifying the Stop G4S campaign, the Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC), the largest coalition in Palestinian civil society that leads the global BDS movement, calls on people of conscience to strengthen the boycott campaign against G4S for its deep involvement in serious Israeli violations of international law: 


Four things you can do to show solidarity with Palestinian hunger strikers in Israeli jails: 

  1. Join our creative action on social media:  Take an individual or group photo holding a sign with the hashtag #StopG4S followed by a message of solidarity with Palestinian political prisoners. Send us the photo to info@bdsmovement.net and we will disseminate your contribution via our social media accounts. You can also tweet the photo using the #StopG4S hashtag and we will retweet it from you.

  2. Organize protests and creative actions promoting the boycott of G4S at its offices in your city.

  3. Organize public events, teach-ins to educate about Palestinian prisoners rights, G4S complicity in Israel’s regime of oppression, and its involvement in serious human rights violations in the private prison industry across the world, and to promote the boycott of and divestment from G4S.

  4. Intensify or start a campaign in your faith community, trade union, pension fund or institution to exclude G4S from contracts and/or divest from it. 

​Let us know about your actions or if you need support or information and share with us photos, press releases, articles or videos: info@bdsmovement.net.


Background: 

G4S, the world’s largest private security corporation, must be held to account for its ongoing contracts with Israel’s prison authorities, given the well-documented fact that Palestinian prisoners, including child prisoners, are persistently subjected to torture, humiliation and ill-treatment in Israeli prisons, including those served by G4S. G4S also provides security services to Israeli illegal settlements and military checkpoints in the occupied Palestinian territory.

Palestinian political prisoners in Israel’s prisons and detention centers have launched a mass hunger strike in support of hunger-striking administrative detainee Bilal Kayed. Kayed, on the 59th day of hunger strike, is protesting his administrative detention, a procedure which allows the Israeli military to hold Palestinian prisoners indefinitely on secret information without charging them or allowing them to stand trial.

Currently, Israel is incarcerating approximately 7,000 Palestinian political prisoners, 350 children, 62 women and detaining 750 under administrative detention. Israel’s prison system is an integral part of its overall regime of oppression against the Palestinian people, designed to break the will of a people fighting for justice, freedom and equality.

Due to consistent BDS campaigning, inspired by the determination of Palestinian political prisoners, G4S has lost contracts worth millions of dollars in more than a dozen countries for its role in Israeli human rights violations. However, after public announcements from the company that it would let contracts with Israel’s prison authorities run out, its Executive Director Ashley Almanza reneged on this commitment. At the 2016 G4S annual general meeting he said ‘we will only conclude the transaction [the sale of G4S Israel] if we receive satisfactory terms’ and that G4S ‘will continue to operate in Israel even if we sell off G4S Israel’.

As Palestinian political prisoners endure hunger in their quest for dignity and freedom, they have exposed Israel’s brutality in denying them their basic rights. To express effective solidarity with their heroic strike, we call for intensifying the Stop G4S campaign to ensure G4S does indeed end all forms of its complicity with Israel’s regime of oppression.

As the successful BDS campaigns against VeoliaOrange and CRH have shown, sustained and strategic boycott and divestment campaigns that adversely affect the bottom line of large corporations involved in Israel’s war crimes and other violations of international law are the most effective means to convince them to end their complicity. The same logic of pressure applies to G4S.

We are well aware that G4S, a so-called ‘security’ corporation, leaves nothing but insecurity and injustice in its wake, profiting daily from institutionalized racism against communities of color, deportations of refugees and asylum seekers, and the privatization of public services. We stand in solidarity with all those standing up to G4S.

 


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