[Image by Carlos Latuff]
In a not-so-surprising newsreport, the Palestinian Independent Commission for Citizens Rights (PICCR) reported that Israeli occupation soldiers forced 68 pregnant women to give birth on road blocks after barring them from crossing as they were being transferred to hospitals and medical centers.
Quoting Saed Bannoura's report on IMEMC:
http://imemc.org/...
Also, the PICCR said that the Israeli procedures complicated the lives of the Palestinian civilians including pregnant women by enforcing harsh conditions and carrying illegal practices at these checkpoints.
Since the beginning of the Al Aqsa Intifada on September 28 2000 until July 2006, 68 pregnant women had to give birth at checkpoints, and that 34 infants and 4 pregnant women died on these checkpoints.
Nothing can justify this but brutality. It is nothing less than a war crime. Imagine the mother and here newborn infant dying due to deliberate, designed, intentional, intended, purposed, and calculated violation on one of the basic human rights.
One would ask: Do Pregnant Women and Infants Have Rights?
- According to Universal Declaration of Human Rights:
http://www.un.org/...
Article 25.
(1) Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.
(2) Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection.
The special care here are road blocks and denial of medical service.
- The Right to Reproductive and Sexual Health:
http://www.un.org/...
The 1994 International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo and the 1995 Fourth World Conference on Women held in Beijing defines reproductive health as:
[...] Implicit in this last condition are the right of men and women to be informed and to have access to safe, effective, affordable and acceptable methods of family planning of their choice, as well as other methods of their choice for regulation of fertility which are not against the law, and the right of access to appropriate health-care services that will enable women to go safely through pregnancy and childbirth and provide couples with the best chance of having a healthy infant (para 72).
The Israeli occupation forces should feel ever so proud of itself for this record!