Red ribbons protest in London highlights Palestinian hostages’ cause
London is hosting a peaceful march and solidarity action on Saturday under the title “Red Ribbons – One Global Demand”, organised as part of the Global Day of Solidarity with Palestinian Prisoners. The event forms part of a coordinated international campaign aimed at re-centring the issue of Palestinian detainees within Western public discourse.
The mobilisation comes at a time when the plight of Palestinian prisoners has sharply receded from international media coverage, despite the continued practice of mass arrests and the absence of any clear political pathway to address their situation.
A coordinated international campaign
The Palestinian Forum in Britain, in coordination with the FreePalHostages initiative, called for participation in the London march and solidarity action, held as part of a wider global effort synchronising protests across multiple cities worldwide.
Held under the slogan “Red Ribbons – One Global Demand”, the campaign seeks to press for the release of Palestinian detainees held in Israeli prisons and to draw attention to what organisers describe as the ongoing use of arbitrary detention against Palestinians.
The campaign has adopted the hashtag #FreePalHostages across social media platforms as part of an effort to frame the issue in rights-based language directed at international audiences.
Time and place
According to organisers, the event will begin at 11:30 am at the east entrance of Russell Square in central London. Participants have been encouraged to display red ribbons as a shared symbol of solidarity with Palestinian detainees, forming a unifying visual presence that reflects the campaign’s international character.
Contesting language in international discourse
The FreePalHostages campaign has adopted the term “hostages” to describe Palestinian prisoners when addressing international audiences. Organisers frame this usage as a political and legal designation that foregrounds the nature of the detention itself.
They argue that, within international human rights discourse, hostages are individuals held outside a fair legal process and whose detention is used as a tool of political pressure or collective punishment, rather than following a complete judicial procedure or final legal ruling.
According to campaign organisers, this framing is intended to highlight the distinction between detention as an instrument of repression and imprisonment based on clear legal conviction, repositioning the Palestinian prisoners’ issue as an ongoing violation of fundamental rights rather than a deferred political or security file.
The approach also seeks to challenge media narratives that have largely confined the term “hostages” to Israeli captives in Gaza, while sidelining other prolonged cases of detention—most notably those involving Palestinian prisoners.
Participation through presence and symbolism
Organisers urged supporters to express solidarity publicly, framing the prisoners’ cause as a transnational demand extending beyond Palestine. Participation, they said, could take multiple forms, from joining the march itself to symbolic acts such as wearing or displaying red ribbons or images of Palestinian detainees.
They emphasised that even silent participation carries political weight, sending a message to international public opinion about the persistence of detention policies and the marginalisation of the issue in global debates.
From “hostages” to prisoners
The mobilisation follows months in which the issue of Israeli captives—commonly referred to in Western media as hostages—dominated political and media agendas. Global attention persisted until these cases were resolved, either through the release of those held alive or the recovery of bodies from Gaza.
By contrast, the issue of Palestinian prisoners has remained largely peripheral, managed outside the sphere of sustained international attention, despite its continuity and expanding scale.
In this context, observers and activists argue that the Red Ribbons campaign represents an effort to reinsert the Palestinian prisoners’ issue into the global human rights agenda, reframing it as an ongoing case of unlawful and inhumane detention—one that has not ended with the conclusion of any single political or military episode.
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