The Palestinian Boycott National Committee issued the following call to action, urging supporters of BDS to vote for G4S as the “Worst Company of the Year” in the Public Eye People’s Award, an annual corporate accountability event.
G4S has been nominated for the infamous “Worst Company of the Year” Public Eye People”s Award’. G4S is complicit in human rights abuses across the world and helps Israel commit crimes against the Palestinians. G4S is involved in running Israel”s prisons, checkpoints, police force and Apartheid Wall.
Israel has a contract with the Israeli Prison service and provides equipment and services to prisons at which Israel detains Palestinian political prisoners without charge and subjects them to torture and ill-treatment. Many Palestinian political prisoners remain on hunger strike to protest detention without trial and one prisoner, Samer Al-Issawi, is approaching 165 days of hunger strike.
Voting closes on January 23 and the winner will be announced at the World Economic Forum in Davos. Let”s embarrass G4S for its support for Israeli Apartheid at one of the most important corporate events of the year.
Please take a minute to vote for G4S and and share this widely.
Click here to go to the voting page
http://www.publiceye.ch/en/
Background information
G4S is a British-Danish private security company that provides services and equipment to Israeli prisons, checkpoints, the Apartheid Wall and the Israeli police.
In 2007, G4S signed a contract with the Israeli Prison Authority to provide security systems and other services for major Israeli prisons. G4S provides systems for the Ketziot and Megiddo prisons, which hold Palestinian political prisoners from occupied Palestinian territory inside Israel. Article 76 of the Fourth Geneva Convention prohibits the transfer of prisoners from occupied territory into the territory of the occupier.
G4S also provides equipment for Ofer prison, located in the occupied West Bank, and for Kishon and Moskobiyyeh detention facilities, at which human rights organisations have documented systematic torture and ill treatment of Palestinian prisoners, including child prisoners. Defence for Children-Palestine (DCI-Palestine) has released an urgent appeal to end the practice of holding Palestinian children from the West Bank in solitary confinement in facilities in Israel. The organization has documented 53 such cases since 2008.
As Palestinian political prisoners begun a mass hunger strike on April 17, Palestinian organisations called for action to be taken to hold G4S accountable for its involvement with Israel”s unlawful detention of Palestinians.
G4S is also complicit with other aspects of Israel”s system of apartheid over the Palestinian people. G4S provides equipment and services to Israeli checkpoints in the West Bank that form part of the route of Israel”s illegal Wall and to the terminals isolating the occupied and besieged territory of Gaza. G4S has also signed contracts for equipment and services for the West Bank Israeli Police headquarters and to private businesses based in illegal Israeli settlements. A panel of legal experts concluded that G4S may be criminally liable for its activities in support of Israel”s illegal Wall and other violations of international law.
G4S has attempted to deflect the criticism it has been facing by announcing that it intends to end some aspects of its involvement in Israel”s illegal settlements by 2015. However, this response is unsatisfactory. The public announcements make no mention of the participation of G4S in the illegal detention and torture of Palestinian political prisoners inside Israel. Additionally, the announcement mentions only some aspects of the company”s involvement in Israel”s illegal settlements and pledges only to exit them at some undetermined point in the future.
Solidarity activists have already started to take effective action against G4S:
– A student-led campaign at the University of Oslo pressured the university to announce that it will terminate its contract with G4S in July 2013.
– Pressure by campaign groups and members of the European Parliament was followed by a decision by the European Union not to renew its contract with G4S for security services at some of its Brussels premises.
– In the UK, mainstream newspapers prominently covered a demonstration that took place outside the G4S annual meeting and have pressured a major energy company to end ties with the company.
– In Denmark, a major bank and several large NGOs have cut their ties to the company because of its ties to Israeli apartheid.
