Palestine, Brussels, XX October 2016
To: The Permanent Representations of EU Members States in Brussels
Subject: Horizon2020 project LAW TRAIN
Dear Sir/Madam,
As Palestinian and European civil society organisations we bring to your attention the project LAW TRAIN, part of the Horizon 2020 EU funding cycle. It constitutes a particular grave case of cooperation with the Israeli military, police and security sector and we ask you therefore not to lend your support or participation to this project as it is forming its advisory board and we request you to re-evaluate EU funding regulations.
LAW TRAIN is building a technological platform to unify the interrogation methodology between EU and Israeli police forces. The project is coordinated by Israel and includes the participation of the Israeli Ministry of Public Security/Israeli National Police, the Federal Public Service of Justice of Belgium and the Ministry of Interior of Spain/Guardia Civil.[1] In August this year, the Ministry of Justice of Portugal and its criminal police have withdrawn from the project after a sustained civil society campaign denouncing the project for being a de facto normalisation of Israel’s most cruel practices, including physical and psychological torture, ill-treatment, arbitrary detention, threats, racial discrimination.[2] In September, a large coalition of Belgium civil society has started a campaign to pressure the ministry and the KU Leuven university to exit the project.[3]
The Israeli National Police and Prison Service, controlled by the Ministry of Public Security, have been repeatedly denounced by Palestinian and international human rights organizations for systematic and ongoing violations of Human Rights and International Law in its practices.[4]Echoing these denunciations, since 1994, the UN Committee against Torture has consistently but unsuccessfully asked Israel for remedies[5]. These methodologies are part of the Israeli system of repression, military control and racial discrimination (apartheid) against the Palestinian people; they are combined with practices of 'administrative detention' (preventive and without fair trial prison), arbitrary arrests and collective punishment.
LAW TRAIN undermines the credibility of the EU and member states as Human Rights’ promoters and risks bringing the EU in contradiction with its own commitments and regulations as well as with its obligations under international law. In other words, it creates active complicity of the EU and participating member states in Israeli violation of Human Rights and International Law:
●The cooperation with the Israeli police forces and the Ministry of Public Security squarely contradicts the EU’s objective ‘to ensure that the absolute and non-derogable prohibition against torture and other ill-treatment is enforced’[6]. Despite Israel’s practices of interrogation include systematic use of torture and ill-treatment, LAW TRAIN works with participating police forces in all project levels to use their experience in interrogation. Moreover, Israel will share with the EU data, even though such data is obtained through interrogations often conducted with the use of torture and ill treatment. The EU has a clear policy against the use of data obtained through the use of torture[7].
● in order to carry out the tasks, online conversations etc as expected by the project, the participating police officers will not leave their headquartersbased in occupied East Jerusalem. Thus,part of the project will be implemented in the OPTs in violation of the guidelines on the eligibility of Israeli entities active in the occupied territories.[8]
●By allowing Israel to use the technology developed to train their police officers, the project sustains and legitimises Israeli illegal practices.
●It risks to activate the proliferation of inhumane treatment in European justice systems, creating risks for EU citizens.
●The ‘creation of models to simulate terrorist like scenarios’[9]coordinated by Israeli institutions, risks to fuel Islamophobia and racist prejudices in the preparation of European police and prison staff.
In fact, LAW TRAIN is just one example why Palestinian and European civil society since years campaign for the exclusion of Israel from the EU research and development funding. Despite the 2013 guidelines on the eligibility of Israeli entities[10], several companies involved in Israeli violations of Human Rights will be participants of the accepted projects. At the time we write, 205 projects with Israeli participation have been approved under the Horizon 2020 framework, a number of which involving Elbit System, the Israeli military technology provider. Thanks to the EU’s previous funding cycle FP7 framework, technologies have been developed together with Israeli institutions that likely has been used by Israel in violation of international law and human rights against the Palestinian people.[11]It is the case for example of Elbit System that developed technologies later used by the Israeli army during the attack on Gaza in 2014. [12]We believe the European Union and member states as human rights promoters put themselves in a highly controversial position of incoherence by funding and cooperating with institutions that systematically violate human rights, while putting in place instruments to protect themselves from cooperating with such institutions.
For this reason:
●We ask you to ensure none of your institutions will participate in the LAW TRAIN advisory board and, in case such participation exists, to follow the example of Portugal and withdraw.
●We ask you to pressure for the ending of EU funding to the Israeli military and homeland security companies as well as Israeli military and security institutions within Horizon 2020, as a necessary step towards an EU policy that effectively promotes human rights and international law in Palestine.
Looking forward for your reply and hoping for your support
Signatories:
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[6]
[7]“[...] information which has clearly been obtained by a third State in obvious violation of human rights shall not be processed.”
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