News

Twenty-five portuguese organizations adhere to international journey in solidarity with palestinian prisonersOn 17 April, about 1500 Palestinians jailed in Israeli prisons for resisting occupation and repression launched a hunger strike, the «strike for freedom and dignity».The hunger strike is an extreme step: deprived of other means of protest, prisoners use their own bodies, endanger their own lives to demand the improvement of their conditions and their liberation.The hunger strikers, of all political factions, demand basic rights such as the right to phone their families, family visits, access to distance higher education, adequate medical care, and the end of solitary confinement and detention without charge or trial.The hunger strikers' complaints have been met by the Israeli authorities only with repression: frequent late night raids, abusive transfers to other prisons, solitary confinement, denial of visits by lawyers and relatives and confiscation of personal belongings...

MPPM (Portuguese Movement for the Rights of the Palestinian People and for Peace in the Middle East) notes with concern the role played by the UN Secretary-General, António Guterres, in the process leading to the resignation of Rima Khalaf from the post of Executive Secretary of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA).The succession of events deserves to be briefly considered. On Wednesday, March 15, ESCWA published a landmark document accusing Israel of apartheid, in a report concluding that «Israel has established an apartheid regime that dominates the Palestinian people as a whole».The authors of the report —Virginia Tilley and Richard Falk, both US experts in international law — «aware of the seriousness of this allegation ... conclude that available evidence establishes beyond a reasonable doubt that Israel is guilty of policies practices that constitute the crime of apartheid as legally defined in instruments of international law». The report...

Dear Mr. António Guterres,We know that the mandate that you begin today will be very demanding.Our planet's problems are dramatic and demand urgent action by the international community.Perhaps never since World War II have the dangers of a conflict between the biggest nuclear powers on the planet been so great.For the peoples of the Middle East, the scourge of war is already a terrible reality. The 21st Century has been for them a century of successive wars, imposed or nourished from abroad, as a result of unconfessed ambitions of economic domination.Entire countries have been, and are being, destroyed and fragmented, their States torn apart. For the peoples, war means death, destruction, forced exile, within their countries or in more distant places. The number of refugees and displaced persons has never been so high since World War II. We know that you are well aware of this reality, because of your worthy work as the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.This reality of...

It was with deep regret that the MPPM- Movement for the Rights of the Palestinian People and Peace in the Middle East - took note of the death of Silas Coutinho Cerqueira, our founding member, director and major driver, occurred yesterday. His wake will take place at the House of Peace, headquarters of the Portuguese Council for Peace and Cooperation in Lisbon, at Rua Rodrigo da Fonseca, 56, 2nd, between 17h and 22h, on Wednesday, August 24th, and between 10 hand 16h Thursday, 25 August. His funeral will take place in the cemetery of Alto de São João, on Thursday, from 17h.A tireless fighter for peace, Silas Cerqueira dedicated his life to the cause of peace and cooperation, solidarity among peoples and the fight against racism, colonialism, apartheid and all forms of discrimination and exploitation. He was an important antifascist fighter and was arrested on several occasions by the police of the dictatorship. A renowned and prestigious international personality, Silas Cerqueira...

On April 25, 1974, the military who, embodied in the Armed Forces Movement, returned to the Portuguese people the freedom, the dignity and the hope, paved the way for the independence of peoples under the Portuguese colonial rule and repositioned Portugal in the right place in the concert of nations, elected three banners for their action: democratize, decolonize, develop.To celebrate the 41st anniversary of the Carnation Revolution, the MPPM calls for the popular movement, local authorities, trade unions, the youth movements and women's organizations, for other democratic and progressive organizations and all citizens in general to give expression to the liberating solidary spirit of April, contributing to increase awareness and mobilization around the national cause of the Palestinian people, inspired by the three April banners:Democratize - Require that the Palestinian people is master of his destiny; demand an end to the arbitrary arrests and the release of Palestinian prisoners in...

We celebrate today, April 17th, another Palestinian Prisoner Day. Since when, in 1974, as part of a prisoners exchange, Mahmoud Hijazi Baker, the first Palestinian arrested by Israel after the occupation of the territories of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip, was released, the Palestinian people recall, on this date, all their children who pay in prison the price of their commitment to the fight for freedom and resistance to occupation. In a framework of constant and systematic repression, of violation of the most basic human rights, of occupation, theft and robbery, of ethnic cleansing and destruction of cultural identity, as what the Palestinian people face every day, it is not easy to determine the exact number of Palestinian men, women or children detained in each moment in Israeli jails. Organizations that follow the situation of Palestinian prisoners estimate that there are now more than six thousand prisoners, among which twenty-three women and one hundred sixty...

Khaleda Jarrar, an MP in the Palestinian Parliament, was detained last Thursday, April 2, when several dozen elements of the Israeli army assaulted her home in Ramallah, where she was with her husband and daughter.Khaleda Jarrar, is a 52-year old lawyer, leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and human rights activist. She chairs the Committee for Palestinian Prisoners of the Palestinian Legislative Council (Parliament) and she is a leader of Addameer, an organization devoted to the defense of prisoners' rights. She is also a member of several organizations that defend women's rights.Since 1998 she is banned from traveling outside Palestine and only once, in 2010, after months of public campaigns, was she authorized to receive medical treatment in Jordan, despite suffering from a chronic illness.A spokesperson for the Israeli Army, quoted by the Ma'an News Agency, accused Kahleda Jarrar of being the leader of a 'terrorist organization' and of having encouraged...

Declaration by the organizations which promoted the International Seminar in Solidarity with the Palestinian PeopleBy decision of the UN General Assembly, 2014 is the International Year of Solidarity with the Palestinian People. Also by decision of the UN General Assembly, every year, on November 29, there is an International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People. The date was chosen in 1977, because on that very same day, in 1947, the UN General Assembly adopted Resolution 181 on the Partition of Palestine, declaring the creation of two States on the historical territory of Palestine. The State of Israel was created the following year, with a unilateral declaration and a planned campaign of violence and terror which brought about a true ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian population. But the promised State of Palestine is, still today, 67 years later, awaiting its materialization.These have been 67 years of broken promises. Sixty-seven years of barbaric wars, such as the...

An initiative with traditionContinuing an initiative already traditional in its with activity, the MPPM organizes a number of events integrated into the Journeys of Solidarity with Palestine - 2012, around the date of November 29, proclaimed by the UN General Assembly as the International Day of Solidarity with the People of Palestine, evoking the date on which, in 1947, the UN General Assembly adopted resolution 181 (II) which recommended the partition of Palestine into two states - one Jewish and one Arab - with a special status for Jerusalem but that was never fulfilled as regards the creation of a Palestinian state. The Journeys of Solidarity with Palestine - 2012 adopted as its motto: "Dignity - Freedom - Identity".Living in Palestine TodayThe Journeys begin on November 15 at High School Professor José Augusto Lucas, in Linda-a-Velha, with a session reserved for students of the School. There will be a screening of the film "A Letter from Sara" (Mutaz Jankot, 2002), followed by a...

Elsa Rodrigues dos Santos, activist of MPPM since its foundation and presently a member of the National Directorate, died last Tuesday, aged 73, victim of sudden illness. She was the widow of painter Figueiredo Sobral.Elsa Rodrigues dos Santos was an expert in Portuguese language and African literature and was President of the Society of Portuguese Language. She was a democratic activist, always eager to participate in fights in defense of the April revolution and for Peace and collaborated with the Portuguese Council for Peace and Cooperation and the Portuguese Movement against Apartheid. She became a militant in the struggle for the rights and liberation of the Palestinian people since the Great World Conference of Solidarity with the Arab People and their Central Cause - Palestine, held in Lisbon in November 1979, which was attended by Yasser Arafat.There is great consternation among all of us, comrades and friends of Elsa. To the children, grandchildren and other members of the...