Throughout the Middle East and North Africa the continuing revolution for freedom, social justice and dignity has been met by regime detention, beatings, torture, sexual harassment and military attacks. Please join us in demanding freedom for political prisoners in all these countries. Show their people that their sons and daughters have not been forgotten. And build the movement of solidarity with the revolution of Syrians, Egyptians, Bahrainis, Palestinians, Iranians and others for Freedom, Justice and Dignity!
Protest to Demand Freedom for Middle East Political Prisoners!
Saturday, December 14, 12 noon
Assemble at the Syrian Consulate,
820 Second Ave. (between 43 and 44th Streets).
At 1pm we will march to the nearby Bahraini, Egyptian, Israeli and Iranian missions, stopping at each to protest.
Throughout the Middle East and North Africa the continuing revolution for freedom, social justice and dignity has been met by regime detention, beatings, torture, sexual harassment and military attacks.
• Before the revolution there, Syria’s Assad regime was used by the U.S. in its program of “extraordinary rendition,” sending captives there to be tortured. Now tens of thousands now sit in regime jails for having protested against Assad. The dictatorship released from its prisons many Al Qaeda-aligned jihadists in order to divide the mass movement and defame it as a terrorist plot. Now groups like Jabhat al-Nusra and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant are detaining and torturing revolutionary activists as well.
• In Egypt, the military has followed its massacres of Muslim Brotherhood supporters in July and August by broadening the targets of its repression to also include democracy activists, leftists and the independent union movement. Recent protests against military trials of civilians and a new law banning protests were met with regime violence, and each day more key activists who have played leading roles in the revolution are being detained.
• In Bahrain, largely under the radar of not only mainstream but even progressive media, demonstrations against the regime occur every day – as does the monarchy’s repression and imprisonment.
• Israel continues its decades-old policy of jailing those resisting Zionism, no matter how young, and using tear gas and live ammunition to try to crush dissent.
• The election of a “reform” President in Iran has not meant freedom for its political prisoners, some of whom are on hunger strike, nor did it prevent the execution in November of Kurdish prisoners.
Meanwhile, the US continues to give billions in military aid to repressive regimes in the region, including providing U.S.-manufactured tear gas used to disperse, wound and kill protesters. And of course the US has its own political prisoners, such as Mumia Abu-Jamal, the victims of the Islamophobic “war on terror,” and the millions of Black youth suffering incarceration to quell dissent over social and economic injustice.
In what can only be called poetic injustice, other forms of mass detention and imprisonment are rife in the region: Syrian refugees in Egypt are detained en masse in abysmal conditions; entire populations of towns in Syria are imprisoned by regime siege and bombing, as are the Palestinians in Yarmouk refugee camp; and Gaza continues to exist as the world’s largest prison – a prison now denied the most basic essentials of life. Meanwhile tens of thousands of Bedouin are being sent into internal exile under the Prawer Plan.
Yet despite all this, millions in these countries continue to rally, strike, occupy their campus or workplace, knowing they could be detained or attacked.
Please join us in demanding freedom for political prisoners in all these countries. Show their people that their sons and daughters have not been forgotten. And build the movement of solidarity with the revolution of Syrians, Egyptians, Bahrainis, Palestinians, Iranians and others for Freedom, Justice and Dignity!
Saturday, December 14, 12 noon
Assemble at the Syrian Consulate,
820 Second Ave. (between 43 and 44th Streets).
At 1pm we will march to the nearby Bahraini, Egyptian, Israeli and Iranian missions, stopping at each to protest.
Called by the MENA Solidarity Network – US
For more information or to endorse:
https://www.facebook.com/MENASolidarityUS http://menasolnetus.wordpress.com/