PFLP calls for urgent international mobilization for Comrade Bilal Kayed
Fight Back News Service is circulating the following Aug. 22 statement from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).
As Comrade Bilal Kayed nears his 70th day of hunger strike, facing the courts of the occupation and threatened with death or serious damage to his health at any moment, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine urges immediate action by all international friends of Palestine and all Palestinian communities to save his life and demand his freedom immediately.
Palestinian leftist writer Comrade Khaled Barakat emphasized the critical importance of this mobilization, saying that “We are calling on all international forces in North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia and Africa to act urgently and mobilize against the ‘slow execution’ of Comrade Bilal Kayed, who has been on hunger strike for almost 70 days.”
“Israel is trying to normalize administrative detention. Today, it is more than any other time, critical to defeat this law and policy and to bring it down,” said Barakat. “The battle of Comrade Bilal Kayed is about precisely this: to end administrative detention – for himself and for 750 fellow Palestinian prisoners.”
“Comrade Kayed, who has been transferred late Friday to an intensive care unit in Barzilai Hospital, has been visited by his lawyer, Farah Bayadsi, last night. The latest confirmed statements by hospital officials and his lawyer indicate that his life is in extreme danger and that he could die at any moment,” Barakat said.
Barakat stressed the urgent need for direct actions and demonstrations in support of Palestinian hunger strikers, including Comrade Bilal Kayed, the brothers Mohammed and Mahmoud al-Balboul, Ayed Herama and Malik al-Qadi, the journalist Omar Nazzal, the imprisoned strugglers Mohammed Abu Aker, Ghassan Zawahreh, the isolated leaders Ahmad Sa’adat, Wael Jaghoub, Kamil Abu Hanish, and hundreds of fellow prisoners engaged actively in this battle of freedom with hunger strikes and protests behind the walls of the occupier’s prison.
“We salute all of the actions that are taking place around the world over the past 69 days and urge them to continue and grow in urgency at this critical time, especially the actions throughout Ireland and in the north of Ireland, where we share a common history of hunger strike among our political prisoners, behind bars for their resistance to colonialism,” Barakat said.