Human rights situation in the OPT – CHR/59th session – Summary record (excerpts)

COMMISSION ON HUMAN RIGHTS

Fifty-ninth session

SUMMARY RECORD OF THE 29th MEETING

Held at the Palais des Nations, Geneva,

on Thursday, 3 April 2003, at 3 p.m.

Chairperson:   Mr. KARIYAWASAM   (Sri Lanka)

(Vice-Chairperson)

CONTENTS

/…

QUESTION OF THE VIOLATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS AND FUNDAMENTAL FREEDOMS IN ANY PART OF THE WORLD, …

(continued)

In the absence of Ms. Al-Hajjaji (Libyan Arab Jamahiriya), Mr. Kariyawasam (Sri Lanka), Vice-Chairperson took the Chair.

The meeting was called to order at 3.05 p.m.

/…

QUESTION OF THE VIOLATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS AND FUNDAMENTAL FREEDOMS IN ANY PART OF THE WORLD, …

/…

21. Mr. EL-KHALED (North-South XXI) said that, three years after its withdrawal from southern Lebanon, Israel continued to hold 16 Lebanese citizens in arbitrary and incommunicado detention. Moreover, there was still no information on the scores of Lebanese who had disappeared during the Israeli occupation, and the corpses of a number of Lebanese still lay in secret cemeteries. Israel had transformed Palestinian villages and towns into concentration camps, where the inmates suffered terrible torture, and its policy of administrative detention was a clear violation of international law.

22. The issue of Palestinian and Lebanese prisoners and prisoners from the occupied Syrian Golan was one that had received little attention from the international community. He called for the release of all Lebanese detainees from Israeli prisons and for disclosure of the whereabouts of those missing; for a mission of inquiry to investigate the inhuman conditions of detention; for the release of women and children detainees; for an end to the administrative detention policy; for the prosecution of those responsible for torture; and for the release of all Arab prisoners in the occupied Golan and all other Arabs held in Israeli prisons.

23. Lastly, he said that the trial of Mr. Marwan El-Barghouti should be declared improper on the grounds that he was an elected parliamentary representative.

/…

The meeting rose at 6.05 p.m.