Hafez Huraini
Season 4, Episode 4: First hand account: HRD Hafez Huraini attacked and harassed by Israeli settlers and authorities.
Listen to this episode on:
Hafez Huraini is a Palestinian farmer and human rights defender from At-Tuwani village, Masafer Yatta, Hebron, Occupied Palestinian Territory. Hafez Huraini is a land rights defender and a leader of the South Hebron Hills Popular Committee, a non-violent resistance group since 2000. Hafez Huraini has been repeatedly assaulted by settlers and arrested by Israeli authorities while working on his land in At-tuwani village.He is also the father of Sami and Sameeha Huraini, Palestinian human rights defenders and co-founders of Youth of Sumud in the South Hebron Hills region of Palestine. Sami and Sameeha Huraini were the award winners from the Middle East and North Africa of the 2021 Front Line Defenders Award for Human Rights Defenders at Risk.
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. In some instances Israeli settlers have also been the perpetrators of violence against human rights defenders.
