Farid Al-Atrash
Farid Al-Atrash is a Palestinian lawyer and human rights defender in Hebron. He is chairman of the Independent Commission for Human Rights in Bethlehem and part of the Popular Struggle Coordination Committee (PSCC), a group which engages in community-based non-violent resistance of various forms, including strikes, protests, and legal campaigns, and supports the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign. The Committee aims to document and expose violations of international law and injustice against families in areas of conflict under Israeli occupation, and to coordinate between various villages involved in struggles against the Wall, ethnic cleansing, settler expansion, and various aspects of Israeli Occupation.
Human rights defenders in the OPT are subjected to acts of harassment, restrictions on freedom of movement, stigmatisation, abductions, long periods of arbitrary detention usually under administrative detention orders, illegal searches of their homes and offices and killings. Many of the violations are state-sanctioned, or if not sanctioned at the highest levels of the Israeli political and military establishment, then condoned by the ongoing policy of impunity which permeates the military and judicial system in relation to the OPT.
