“I’m sure you miss me a lot,” Brazilian activist Thiago Silva told his daughter, dictating to his lawyer. Despite recognizing the certainty of her longing for succession, Ávila reflected in the letter her confidence that, “someday,” her daughter will be able to understand the meaning of her activism. “It is because I love you so much that I believe that there is nothing more dangerous for you and for other children than to live in a world that accepts genocide,” he said. His two-year-old daughter is called Teresa, like her grandmother, Teresa Regina de Ávila y Silva, who died this Tuesday in Brasilia at the age of 63 without being able to say goodbye to her son.still imprisoned in Israel.
Thiago, according to the Global Sumud Flotilla (GSF) organization, has not only been “deprived of the most basic of human rights, the opportunity to say goodbye to his mother,” but he is still unaware of the event. “Thiago does not even know that he has lost his mother. Because he is held in isolation and deprived of contact with the outside world, he has been robbed of the opportunity to begin mourning supported by his community. Instead, It is likely that this devastating news was communicated to you by the IOF soldiers themselves. [Fuerzas de Ocupación Israelíes] who have subjected him to systematic abuse, using his pain as another tool of psychological warfare,” warn the Global Sumud Flotilla.
Thiago Avila and Saif Abukeshek were illegally detained by the Israeli Army while sailing through international waters, near Greece, 1,000 miles from Israel. They are the only two activists from the flotilla that Benjamin Netanyahu’s Government did not release in Crete. As reported by Adalah’s lawyers, Abukeshek and Ávila. They suffered “severe abuse, including beatings, prolonged physical restraint, blindfolding, and isolation at sea.” An Israeli court has decided to keep them in prison at least until next Sunday. Both continue on hunger strike “in protest against their detention and the ill-treatment suffered.”
Despite everything, this Tuesday Saif and Thiago appeared before a court in Ashkelon capable of showing a kind of joy and gestures of encouragement. “It says a lot about their way of being that, being as they are, they try to put on a smile so that their families and all of us can see them well, as if to say ‘let’s move on,'” he tells El HuffPost Elena Zurita, member of the Global Sumud Flotilla. The two are very aware that, every time they embark on such a mission, “they put their lives at risk,” but “in the end they fight for their children, to leave a better mark on the world.”.
This way of being can also be observed in their families. “They are those types of people who encourage people when they are the ones who are worse off”says the activist. All of this, especially the ability to “smile with bruises on your face, gives impressive strength to continue the mission.” “Israel believes that they have left us beheaded as an organization, but what they have achieved is that Saif and Thiago teach us another lesson. Their way of facing this gives us a lot of strength,” says Zurita.
While all activists traveling in the different flotillas to Gaza are aware that they may face arrest, if not worse, by Israel, the concern was even greater regarding Saif Abukeshek. “Due to his Palestinian origin, he was traveling on one of the observation boats and the intention was for him to stay behind the orange line [el punto en el que Israel asegura tener el control del Mediterráneo]but they went to look for him. They were looking for him,” says Zurita. According to him, when the Israeli Army boats began to surround the ships of the flotilla, all the activists realized that there was something different in their way of acting: “They were looking for a specific person, and until they found Saif they did not free the others”.
In the Global Sumud Flotilla they do not lose hope in achieving the release of both as soon as possible. This same Wednesday, the extension issued at the beginning of this week is appealed. The two extensions that have already occurred also demonstrate that the prosecution “does not have it so easy to file charges against him.” As Abukeshek himself commented months ago to this medium while organizing the first Global Sumud Flotilla, “The moment of failure comes when hope is lost”.
