On Saturday, March 7th, Al-Ahrar Palestinian Prisoner Support’s Toronto chapter attended the city’s annual International Working Women’s Day rally and march. We know that colonial incarceration and imperialism are feminist issues, so our membership took to the streets to connect with the women of Toronto to share the stories of Palestinian women prisoners and call for their release.
In Palestine, colonial prisons are instruments of racist, capitalist, and patriarchal domination, and Damon Women’s Prison is one of its symbols: Palestinian prisoners are not imprisoned because they are women, but because they are Palestinian women.
Their incarceration is a form of colonial violence that tears them away from their comrades, families, and loved ones, subjecting them to gender-based, sexual, and racial violence. By locking them behind bars, the Zionist entity hopes not only to deprive them of their freedom, but also of their central role in their communities and in the Resistance.
Palestinian women have played a historic and essential role in the struggle for national liberation. Despite everything, the prisoners continue to fight inside the colonial prisons and, alongside their male comrades, have transformed the prison into a school of revolution and an arena of confrontation against colonialism.
Myassar al-Faqih, a 60 year-old feminist activist in the Palestinian left who was released under the Toufan Al-Ahrar prisoner exchange agreement after four months in colonial prisons, reminds us forcefully of this:
“Palestinian women are mothers, sisters, prisoners, martyrs, resistance fighters, heroines, unshakable women, and the wounded; they nourish the fighters of the resistance, are present on the front lines, and are the teachers of the love of the homeland. Their social rights strengthen the power of their national role.”
The Palestinian Resistance, driven by the determination of the proud and steadfast people of Gaza, has led to the release of 3,985 Palestinian prisoners, including 142 women, during the three phases of the Toufan Al-Ahrar exchange agreement. More than 9,300 Palestinian prisoners remain incarcerated in colonial prisons under inhumane conditions with at least 70 women incarcerated in Damon colonial prison.
All over the world, prisons are a tool of repression serving a racist, patriarchal, and capitalist order. They aim to crush voices for freedom, break progressive and emancipatory struggles, and maintain oppression. The commitment to the liberation of Palestinian prisoners is part of a global struggle for the abolition of colonialism and imperialism including their weapon of incarceration and the end of all forms of domination, and the fight for women’s liberation cannot be separated from the anti-colonial, anti-Zionist, and anti-racist struggle.
With March 8, International Working Women’s Day, in mind, we reaffirm our support for the Palestinian Resistance, our solidarity with all Palestinian prisoners, and call for the destruction of Damon colonial prison and all other colonial prisons.
Free All Palestinian Women Prisoners!
Free Them All!
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Participants of Toronto’s IWWD 2026 rally and march calling for the release of Palestinian women prisoners incarcerated in Damon Prison
