While millions of us get ready to ding dong merrily on high, six young political activists have so far been on hunger strike for between a month and six weeks in five different prisons where they are held on remand. Two more started eating recently.
These are the names of those still striking: Heba Muraisi, Teuta Hoxha, Lewie Chiaramello, Amu Gib and Kamran Ahmed. Student Qesser Zuhrah, 20, was taken to hospital and ended her protest yesterday after 48 days of starvation. Gib and Ahmed are also in hospital; Chiaramello is a diabetic.
The group are being held over their alleged involvement in break-ins at the Bristol offices of a UK subsidiary of the Israeli defence firm Elbit Systems in August 2024, and a Royal Air Force base in Oxfordshire in June this year. They deny the charges against them. All have spent well over a year in jail – the standard pre-trial custody time limit is six months. So their incarceration, now way beyond that limit, is unlawful. They are asking for immediate bail, a fair trail, the closure of Israeli defence companies in the UK, and the right to communicate with the outside world. I strongly support all the demands.
We live in relatively progressive times, but British governments still exert illegitimate power to intimidate and subdue people. While singing songs of praise to democracy and freedom, our masters pass punitive laws to control democracy and grab our freedoms. The police are given licence to behave with undue severity, and courts to come down heavily on political prisoners. Supporters of the now prohibited Palestine Action are the latest.
More than 800 doctors, nurses, therapists and carers have warned Justice Secretary David Lammy that “without resolution, there is the real and increasingly likely potential that young British citizens will die in prison, having never even been convicted of an offence”. James Smith, an emergency physician and university lecturer who is in contact with the hunger strikers, has added his concerns about prolonged starvation leading to heart muscles breaking down, kidney filtration problems, muscle weakness that affects breathing and sudden death.
Some supporters of these young lives have complained that essential medical help is being denied to them. Prison authorities deny the allegations. One prison spokesperson said: “All prisoners have full access to healthcare, including attendance at external medical facilities if needed.” Meanwhile, the prisons minister Lord Timpson tells us: “We are very experienced with dealing with hunger strikes.”
Lammy stays silent. On Wednesday, asked during PMQs by Jeremy Corbyn whether he would meet representatives of the hunger strikers, Starmer declined. Speaker Lindsay Hoyle said this week that Starmer and Lammy refusing to engage was “totally unacceptable”. As a journalist, I am duty bound to ask whether the conspicuous indifference is the result of Britain’s close links with Israel.
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Professor Bart Cammaerts, of the London School of Economics, remembers our media assiduously reporting on the Irish hunger strikes in the 1980s and asks why “the Palestine Action hunger strikes have been largely met with media silence. What will it take for the British media to pay attention to the plight of jailed pro-Palestinian activists? The death of an activist? Or the awakening of a moral conscience?”
I remember those IRA men, many violent insurgents. Thatcher appeared intensely relaxed as they died one after another, 10 in total in a 1981 hunger strike. Are you ready for that to happen to these young people, who have not bombed or killed anyone? The Good Law Project, which believes in justice for all, has launched a campaign highlighting the plight of the hunger strikers. Please, please sign up. I just have.
In 1910, Mary Jane Clarke, a suffragette, died on Christmas Day after refusing to eat in prison and being force-fed. Don’t let other such fatalities happen this Christmas.
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