(Ahlul Bayt News Agency) - Shawan Jabarin, director of the Palestinian human rights non-governmental organisation Al-Haq, was due to be presented with a “distinguished graduate award” as part of the 10th anniversary celebrations at the Irish Centre for Human Rights in Galway.
Human rights lecturer at the centre, Shane Darcy, expressed concern that Jabarin will not be able to leave the Israeli-occupied West Bank to travel to Ireland for the ceremony on Friday.
The Irish Times said that the activist, who was Amnesty International’s first Palestinian prisoner of conscience, had already suffered imprisonment and torture.
Jabarin, who studied international human rights at the Galaway centre from 2004 to 2005, is taking legal action to challenge the Israeli ban. “I will not surrender and I will not give up my stance,” he said but believed “in the end it will take public pressure”.
The Irish Centre for Human Rights is recognised as one of the world’s premier university-based institutions for the study and promotion of human rights and humanitarian law.
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