RAMALLAH, West Bank — A prominent Palestinian activist begins a hunger strike to protest his detention by the Palestinian Authority after he criticized the autonomy government of President Mahmoud Abbas.
Issa Amro was detained Monday by Palestinian security forces in Hebron, the West Bank’s largest city, after he criticized the detention of a local journalist who had called for Abbas’s resignation. Amro expressed his views in a Facebook post.
Leading human rights groups blasted Amro’s detention. London-based Amnesty International and the Palestinian Independent Commission for Human Rights said it signals a growing crackdown on free expression in the autonomous Palestinian enclaves in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
Issa Amro, who leads the ‘Youths Against Settlements’ organization, criticizes the Israeli government and Hebron’s Jewish settlers in the old city, on November 5, 2015. (Judah Ari Gross/Times of Israel)
Amro is the founder of the group Youth Against Settlements in volatile Hebron, where Jewish settlers live in heavily guarded enclaves in the center of the city.
Amro is on hunger strike to protest what he says is was an unlawful detention, made without a warrant or due process, says his brother, Ahmad Amro.
“Issa started a hunger strike today protesting his arbitrary arrest,” he says. “He has been in detention for more than 24 hours without being presented before a prosecutor and without official charges.”
— AP
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