With the arrival of spring, we wish the entire human rights community and its supporters success in the many struggles that stand before us. 
 Legal Advocacy
| The army changes procedures regarding handcuffing of detainees in custody
After years of advocacy by PCATI on the subject of painful handcuffing of detainees, the IDF changes its guidelines in order to prevent physical harm and pain. The new guidelines emphasize “the obligation to prevent medical harm caused by the handcuffing and the obligation of the commander in the field to ensure repeatedly and within a reasonable amount of time that the cuffing is not constrictive beyond what is necessary.” |
End of the age of impunity?
PCATI appeals to the High Court of Justice: Order the Attorney General to investigate complaints of torture in GSS interrogations
PCATI filed an appeal on Tuesday March 9, 2010 to the High Court of Justice requesting the issuing of a conditional order obligating the Attorney General to act within his authority and order the Police Investigations Unit to open investigations of GSS interrogators suspected of torture and cruel and inhumane violence during the interrogation of a security prisoner in 2008, in violation of the Criminal Code of 1977. Supreme Court Justice A. Hayot allowed the state 30 days to file a response to the appeal.
On the 9th of March, along with 7 other human rights organizations, we appealed to the new Attorney General, Adv. Yehuda Weinstein, asking him to order the opening of a criminal investigation in every case arousing suspicion of torture or abuse by GSS interrogators. In addition, we requested that he change the manner in which his office deals with such complaints: the process as of today, instead of allowing the Attorney General or State Prosecutor’s Office to decide the fate of the case as required by law, is that none other than a GSS employee, the OCGIC, who himself decides the fate of the case. With the situation as it is, no wonder that out of the over 650 complaints of this sort filed with the Attorney General, not a single one has resulted in the opening of a criminal investigation.
Our letter referred the Attorney General to a recent PCATI report: Accountability Denied: The Absence of Investigation and Punishment of Torture in Israel, which details the total immunity GSS interrogators receive from the Attorney General. The closing of every torture victim's complaint assures the interrogators that if they abuse and even torture, they will be protected from the long arm of the law, insulated from personal punishment. PCATI delivered the report to the Attorney General before its release, so that we would be able to publish his response. We received no response, hence the letter in which we detailed his legal obligations and demanded to know how he plans to change the current situation.
| | | Human rights organizations in appeal to HCJ: Israel may not decide which parent a Palestinian child will live with: PCATI and 11 other organizations joined "Hamoked: Center for Defense of the Individual" and "Gisha" in opposition to a new guideline which almost completely blocks the possibility to move residency from the Gaza Strip to the West Bank.
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| Public Engagement | 'Et LeShinui' (Time for Change) Festival 13.2.2010
As part of our public engagement, PCATI makes a point of joining different events all over the country and attracting a wide and varied crowd. At these events, we set up an information booth and invite passersby to come and speak with us and hear about what we do. The raising of public awareness regarding the issues we deal with, and the struggle against public apathy, are in our eyes a crucial and inseparable part of the struggle against torture.
Last February, we joined the book festival of the organization 'Et LeShinui' (Time for Change) at Ein HaShofet Kibbutz in Ramot Menashe. Hundreds of people arrived to the festival and stopped at PCATI's booth, where they were offered information booklets, were given the chance to speak with PCATI representatives and given the option of joining the Friends of PCATI.
Interested in volunteering at PCATI's information booths in events all over the country? . | Cinema and Human Rights Project
During the past two years, PCATI has been running an educational program which incorporates human rights into the experience of film. The seven student guides who joined the project this year run activities in educational settings in the Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Beer Sheva areas.
The different groups meet more or less every month, watch a full-length film together, and afterwards engage in an in-depth discussion. Based on the film’s visual language, the discussion approaches human rights issues raised in the film and asks about the status of these rights in Israeli society.
These activities happen with the cooperation of The Third Ear (‘HaOzen HaShlishit’), through which the public screening rights of the films are organized.
The goal of the project is to create a meaningful debate about human rights in Israeli society through development of critical viewing and thinking skills in the viewing of film.
Interested in more information? You are invited to write to: paula@stoptorture.org.il 
Launch of new blog for the Education Project:
"Bad things happen when good people don't speak up." The writer, Noa Hofner, is an intern with PCATI and a group guide in PCATI's Cinema and Human Rights Project:
At the beginning of this academic year I joined the Cinema and Human Rights Project through an Everett Grant. In the project I guide three groups in the Tel Aviv area. The differences between the groups is fascinating for me and the places to which our discussions wander move me every time.
In addition to my role as a guide I also developed the project's blog, as part of an effort to create a forum in which to continue discussions beginning in the classroom, among all participants in the project across the country and to allow a broad discussion of human rights even after the end of the activities.
In recent years, blogs have become a popular and important tool for social change. I hope that the Cinema and Human Rights Project's blog will become a leading social change blog and contribute another element to our activity.
You are welcome to check out the blog and to contribute comments or suggestions (in Hebrew).
Torture, Systematic Impunity and Legal Reality: PCATI Executive Director Ishai Menuchin's weekly radio show (in Hebrew). |
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