A conversation with Salah Hammouri, human rights lawyer and writer and Annelies Moors, University of Amsterdam, facilitated by Jihan Safar, ULB

This event is organised by OMAM in collaboration with REPI

In the aftermath of October 7th, discussions about Israeli hostages have been central to international political negotiations and public debate. Less attention has been warranted to the fate of Palestinian political prisoners. For the past seven months, Israeli forces have detained at least 8.000 women, children, elderly people, as well as professionals such as doctors, nurses, teachers and journalists. As documented by Addameer, this campaign of arbitrary mass arrest has been accompanied by unprecedented brutality resulting in the deaths of 16 detainees due to systematic torture, medical neglect, starvation policies, and a range of violations and acts of abuse targeting both male and female prisoners, including children, elderly individuals, and the sick. This conversation panel considers experiences of captivity in light of a long colonial history of incarceration which defines Palestinian history and collective memory. Thinking with the gendered, neglected and contested political lives of incarceration, we will discuss how detention and the prison function not only as political tools for managing populations, disciplining individuals and fragmenting societies but also as a means of education, struggle and resistance.

Annelies Moors is an anthropologist and professor emerita at the University of Amsterdam. She has studied Arabic at the University of Damascus and has done extensive fieldwork in Palestine, Yemen and the Netherlands. From 2001-2008, Moors directed the program on Muslim Cultural Politics as Amsterdam Chair at the International Institute for the Study of Islam in the Modern World (ISIM). Her most recent large research project was the ERC advanced grant Problematizing “Muslim Marriages”: Ambiguities and Contestations. She is currently working on The struggle for the future of ethnography at NIAS.

Salah Hammouri is a Franco-Palestinian human rights lawyer and writer. He has been a political prisoner for more than two years and was recently exiled by the State of Israel from his hometown of East Jerusalem because of his involvement in the NGO Addameer, which defends Palestinian prisoners’ rights. Salah Hamouri is the author of “Prisonnier de Jérusalem. Un détenu politique en Palestine occupée,” published by Libertalia in collaboration with Orient XXI in 2023.

Jihan Safar is a sociologist and a research associate to the Observatoire des mondes arabes et musulmans (OMAM) in the Maison des sciences humaines (MSH) at the Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB).

Rescheduled: date to be defined later

TBD

This event willl be held in english and is open to the public. Please do register here