Four prisoners in the United Kingdom linked to the banned group Palestine Action are continuing with their hunger strike, despite grave medical warnings and two fellow strikers having recently paused their protest after suffering serious health concerns.
The protest group Prisoners For Palestine said the four remaining hunger strikers – Kamran Ahmed, Heba Muraisi, Teuta Hoxha and Lewie Chiaramello – would continue with their protest action, despite Ahmed, 28, being hospitalised on Saturday for the third time since he began refusing food.
“The remaining four will continue to refuse food on the basis of [their] demands,” the group said on Tuesday.
The hunger strikers are demanding immediate bail, the right to a fair trial, and for the UK to de-proscribe Palestine Action, which it outlawed as a “terror” group in July. For their part, the pro-Palestinian group says the UK government is complicit in Israeli war crimes committed in Gaza.
They are also calling for an end to alleged censorship of their communication, and are demanding that all sites operated by Israel’s largest weapons manufacturer, Elbit, be closed.
The statement said the remaining strikers, who are being held on remand, were adding to their list of demands: calling for an end to non-association orders between them, for access to the same courses and activities as sentenced prisoners, and for Muraisi to be transferred back from a prison in northern England to Bronzefield prison in Surrey, closer to her networks in London.
Chiaramello, who is on an intermittent hunger strike, refusing food every other day due to being diabetic, is experiencing confusion, dizziness, and weakness, Prisoners For Palestine said.
The prisoners are accused of involvement in break-ins at a UK factory operated by Elbit near Bristol and a Royal Air Force base in Oxfordshire last year, during which two military planes were spray-painted. They deny the charges against them, such as burglary and violent disorder.
The pledge to continue with the strike comes after two of their fellow prisoners announced a pause to their strike on Friday after suffering serious health impacts.
Qesser Zuhrah, a 20-year-old who Prisoners For Palestine said had halted her hunger strike after 48 days of refusing food, was experiencing “continuous excruciating pain in her abdomen”, the group said.
Her decision to pause the hunger strike came after staff at the prison denied her an ambulance last week for more than 18 hours, prompting MP Zarah Sultana to join protests outside the jail before she was taken to hospital.
In a statement, Zuhrah – whose lawyers said she had lost 13 percent of her body weight – indicated she intended to return to the hunger strike, warning the government, “We will certainly return to battle you with our empty stomachs in the new year.”
Another prisoner, Amu Gib, had also resumed eating after the hunger strike had left them using a wheelchair due to severe weakness and brain fog.
Sultana, representing the recently-formed Your Party, paid tribute to Zuhrah and Gib, saying their actions had “laid bare the cruelty of a Labour government wanting them to die”.
“They refused to give them that – and will resume in the new year,” she said in a statement, calling for immediate bail for the group.
She said the four remaining strikers remained “at a critical point, refusing food until their demands are met, UK complicity ends and Palestine is free”.
On Monday, lawyers for the hunger strikers said they had written a pre-claim letter to the government, warning that they would seek a High Court case over their demands to meet Justice Secretary David Lammy to discuss welfare and prison conditions.