Centre for Applied Human Rights
Ziad Hmaidan
Palestine, CAHR, Autumn 2008
My name is Ziad Hmaidan from Palestine. I’m a Palestinian human rights defender from Bethlehem and a student at Birzeit University on the Masters programme in Sociology. Since 2000 I have been a fieldworker with the human rights organization Al-Haq, which is a Palestinian non-governmental organization, an affiliate organization of the International Commission of Jurists, which conducts research and advocacy work on human rights . My work in Al-Haq is monitoring and documenting the Israeli human rights violations in Bethlehem. I’m one of many field workers at Al-Haq who work on the front line. The information I collect through meeting victims and taking testimonies, reports, photos and videos is sent to Al-Haq’s office in Ramallah where it is collated and used in advocacy work.
The Israeli authorities, without charge or fair trial, detained me from May 2005 to March 2007 on the basis of “secret evidence” and "suspicion of involvement in terrorist activities". This "evidence" was never disclosed to me or to my lawyer, effectively rendering it unchallengeable in judicial proceedings and denying my right to a fair trial. The administrative detention order was extended on several occasions, always on the basis of the "secret evidence" which made me like Prometheus coerced by endless suffering without seeing a light at the end of the tunnel... just because I tried to light a candle against the darkness of the Israeli occupation. Awaiting the end of the administrative detention order... pushing the days after days like Sisyphus who was coerced by the Gods to push a rock from the bottom to the top of the hill every day of his life... and like him at the top... on the last day... again I was faced with another administrative detention order, and had to start pushing from the bottom. But in spite of all these feelings I was convinced that the darkest hour is that before the dawn... and I saw the dawn. At last, after a long campaign by Al-Haq, many international human rights organizations and some of the EU states like Ireland and the Netherlands, finally I was released in March 2007 after 22 months in Al-Naqb desert prison. To this day I still believe I was placed under administrative detention, because I’m a human rights activist and working with Al-Haq.
This is an opportunity to heal the wounds of that cruel detention experience, which I believe I need a long time to recover from.
After that miserable experience I returned to my family, my job and my study, which is not easy but I’m trying to do that. Therefore I was nominated by Al-Haq to the Centre for Applied Human Rights (CAHR) fellowship. This is an opportunity to heal the wounds of that cruel detention experience, which I believe I need a long time to recover from. The fellowship gives me the opportunity to speak about my field experience to people here and to learn more about human rights. I get to attend lectures in the Masters programme of Applied Human Rights. Also, in December I’m going with the MA students on a field trip to South Africa, so I’m planning now to work on a comparative study between the apartheid regime and the Israeli occupation in Palestine. The country and the people I left behind are still living under the cruelty of the Israeli occupation and human rights abuses. That is the country I’ll go back to because I’m in love with her, and still believe in the message of human rights.
There are no words to express my thanks to Al-Haq, the CAHR, and everybody who supported me and gave me this opportunity to be in the University of York in the UK, to live this amazing experience with the CAHR. Already I went to London and I had the chance to enter Westminster meeting parliament members and attending a voting session, at that moment I remembered the days of detention, I still remember how I thought that I’m not going to be free again, but on the other hand I still remember how I didn’t let detention break my free spirit, and how I decided not to give up my faith and hope, because I believed that without hope the heart would break, and because I felt that there is somebody who cares far away trying to help me, and sharing with me my beliefs. But really at that time I couldn’t imagine that I will have such an opportunity as to be here in the UK.
I’m talking about that because my story like many stories proves the idea of human rights, that if we have strong beliefs to do something, the whole universe will help us achieve it... and with all the suffering we see in the world, still on this earth there is something worth living for. Again for everybody involved in the project of CAHR, thank you from my heart.