Support the Hunger Strikers — New Zine
Prisoners for Palestine released a new zine to draw attention and support comrades on Hunger Strike in response to repression in the UK.
Download here:
support-the-hunger-strikers-imposed.cleaned
#hungerstrike
A Basket of Thoughts – Italian Anarchist Massimo Passamani Solidarity With Hunger Strike
In the twilight zone of sorts I find myself in- neither free nor fully imprisoned – I have decided to give up my daily work release from prison for the next week, as a gesture of solidarity with the Palestine Action comrades on hunger strike in British prisons, a strike my friend and brother Stecco has also joined. I know that my staying in prison instead of going to work will not bother the prison administration in the least. But my message is not addressed to prison management – whom I have nothing to say to and nothing to ask of but to those who are fighting against the genocide of the Palestinian people, alongside its indomitable resistance.
What I can offer, along with this small gesture, is a basket of thoughts, a handful of words with which to express what is in my heart.
The strength that comes to me from British prisons which, in turn, reflects the tenacity of that resistance which Zionist prisons and administrative detention centers are unable to bow, despite the isolation, the torture, and the rapes has not only the form of a commonality of ethics and ideals, but also the intensity of the emotions I feel in reading the hunger strike statements. I am convinced because I feel it in every fiber of my soul – that the worldwide stirring against the genocide in Gaza and against the global system that makes it possible is a new start, a beginning. In addition to what has happened in the streets, in the ports, in the universities; in addition to the sabotages done by day and by night, the protests that link prisoners across cell bars, countries, and continents are also an important sign of this. First of all, because the relationship being created between “inside” and “outside” is one of reciprocity and circularity, and not just one of support from “outside” to “inside”. The fact that the shutdown of all Elbit Systems establishments in the UK is one of Prisoners for Palestine’s demands shows the will not to separate one’s own fate from the liberation of Palestine, a goal that requires nothing less than the global subversion of the relations of power and exploitation, of which Zionist settler colonialism is an essential node.
The algorithmic genocide of the Palestinian people is the most heinous expression of a scientific- military-industrial system at war with the oppressed, with immigrants, with women, with those who are different, with children, with all life, and, at this point, with humans as such.
If, as Mohammed El-Kurd wrote, there are “seeds that sprout in hell”, the revolt against the hell of Gaza is sprouting an International of humankind.
The fact that State terrorists cry “terrorism” in the face of attempts to at least partially sabotage their genocidal violence means that they are starting to feel afraid. And so they should. Because burning hearts, unlike algorithms, are not predictable. And they are not predictable because they do not subordinate their seeking for freedom and justice to cost-benefit analyses. As a tree does not need to see all of the forest to know the great oak has been felled because it senses it through the close-knit network of its roots – so do those humans who refuse to become machines feel the suffering and the joy of other humans they will never meet. Solidarity between unknown sisters and brothers, whose deeds and words inflame us, is the moral leavening of every Intifada, the most precious gift in the basket.
Strength and courage to Palestinian prisoners. Strength and courage to prisoners for Palestine. Solidarity with Anan, Ali and Mansour. Side by side with my friend and comrade Stecco.
Trento prison, November 12th 2025
Massimo Passamani
https://abolitionmedia.noblogs.org/?p=22795
#anarchism #europe #hungerStrike #insurrection #massimoPassamani #palestine #repression
“#Sultana demands release of hunger-striking anti-genocide activists held without trial”
by Skwawkbox with The Canary @thecanaryuk @uk_politics @palestine@fedibird.com
@Palestine@masto.ai @palestine@lemmy.ml
“The group have already been held in prison for more than a year without trial. And, they face a wait of up to another two years before they even actually come to trial”
https://www.thecanary.co/skwawkbox/2025/11/12/sultana-demands-release/
#Press #Labour #Starmer #Lammy #Filton24 #PalAction #HungerStrike #Trial #AbuseOfPower #IsraelLobby #Israel #Gaza #Genocide
Jailed Tunisian opposition leader Jawhar Ben Mbarek assaulted in prison, family says http://newsfeed.facilit8.network/TPFMKR #Tunisia #HumanRights #PoliticalPrisoner #OppositionLeader #HungerStrike
Italy: Luca Dolce – Hunger Strike in Solidarity with UK Prisoners and Palestinian Resistance
Yesterday, November 4th, I received news of the start of a hunger strike called by tens of political prisoners imprisoned in the United Kingdom for their struggles in solidarity with and for the liberation of Palestine.
In recent months, I read about comrade Teuta “T” Hoxha’s hunger strike, and was able to follow her story and that of comrades Casey Goonan and Malik Muhammad. I had time to ponder in case, as I expected, another chance presented itself to join a struggle which I feel an affinity for, which I feel deeply is my own.
The struggle against prison and the military techno-industrial system is essential for a struggle of broader scope, of revolutionary and internationalist resistance.
I am joining in the hunger strike, starting on November 8th, and will carry it out with an eye to the tactics and approach proposed by the comrades who initiated it. If it continues indefinitely, I will go on while paying attention to my body’s limits, deciding for myself whether and when to stop and continue the protest by other means.
I will take the time I need to share further thoughts as the protest continues. The reasons for this struggle, the actions for which these comrades are now imprisoned, speak for themselves.
I stand by their side with serenity and resolve.
Currently, I do not know whether the Palestinian comrade Anan Yaeesh, imprisoned in Melfi, is still on hunger strike. Regardless, my solidarity with him, Ali, and Mansour is vivid and strong.
With humility and respect, I close these lines by quoting the Kurdish comrade Sakîne Cansiz:
“On the other hand, facing the enemy on your own is also a special thing. Revolutionary will gathers in you. You can feel within yourself conviction, determination, the pure desire to fight. It is the most beautiful part of revolutionary struggle. Nothing distracts you, and you demolish the enemy with the strength of your personality. It is something to do with you, but also with the enemy’s image reflected in you. In your defense, it recognizes its impotence.”
Luca Dolce, known as Stecco, anarchist comrade
Sanremo prison
11/05/2025
Luca Dolce
c/o Casa Circondariale Sanremo
Strada Armea, 144
18038, Sanremo (IM)
Italia
https://abolitionmedia.noblogs.org/?p=22603
#AnarchistPrisoners #europe #hungerStrike #italy #solidarityPalestine #Stecco
In 1920, 65 men were held without trial in #CountyCork gaol by the UK and in August began a #HungerStrike. All but 11 were freed or moved. #MichaelFitzgerald died after 68 days, #JoeMurphy after 79. The rest held out for 94 days, ending the #CorkHungerStrike on #ThisDayInHistory.
"Of the Filton 24, all were denied bail and some have been in prison for over a year awaiting trial. Most will be imprisoned for two years before trial due to the decision to charge them under counterterror powers. This far exceeds the UK’s standard pre-trial custody time limit for the crown court of 182 days"
#PalestineAction #HungerStrike #UKPolitics
Palestine Action Prisoners’ Hunger Strike to Become Biggest Since Irish Republicans | Novara Media
https://novaramedia.com/2025/11/11/palestine-action-prisoners-hunger-strike-to-become-biggest-since-irish-republicans/
Political Prisoner Joseph “Shine White” Stewart on Hunger Strike
Imprisoned in the United States since 2001 for criminal activities, Joseph “Shine White” Stewart became politically active in prison and is known for his activism and efforts to organize and raise awareness about prison conditions and prisoners’ rights.
On October 7, he was transferred from Foothills prison to Marion prison because of his activism. Upon arrival, he was restrained, tear-gassed, tasered in the face, and beaten by guards, suffering injuries to his shoulder and ribs. This is in addition to existing injuries inflicted by guards at Foothills, for which he has been denied medical care, on top of the ongoing medical neglect of his pre-existing chronic health conditions.
In response, Shine began a hunger strike on October 11, grew weaker by the day, and was transferred to the hospital on October 28. He is demanding to be transferred out of the jurisdiction of the Western Regional Director, LaDonna Browning, whom he holds responsible for this increased repression, and to receive proper medical care. He is asking supporters to intensify their appeals.
Source: https://secoursrouge.org/usa-le-prisonnier-politique-joseph-shine-white-stewart-en-greve-de-la-faim/
https://abolitionmedia.noblogs.org/?p=22514
#hungerStrike #josephShineWhiteStewart #northAmerica #PoliticalPrisoners #UnitedStates
"Fourth Palestine Action prisoner launches hunger strike over ‘systematic abuse’
Three of the inmates say they have repeatedly been refused medical attention and electrolytes since they announced their strike"
@todayilearned
For reference.
Catalogue description:
Charges of spying against Norwegian Alfred Hagn and commutation of sentence.
(This record has not been digitised and cannot be downloaded).
https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C160074
#WWI #art #painting #painters #capitalPunishment #law #policing #whatWouldSirRobertPeelDo #hungerStrike
I'm going on #hungerstrike in prison for #Gaza
Wednesday, November 5, 2025
Air terror: Russia drops record number of aerial guided bombs on Ukraine in October -- Video shows Russian drone killing white flag-waving civilians and dog, Ukraine opens war crimes investigation -- Russia's seaborne oil exports see sharpest fall since early 2024 after new US sanctions -- Belgium yet again shuts down Brussels Airport due to suspicious drone sighting ... and morehttps://activitypub.writeworks.uk/2025/11/wednesday-november-5-2025/
RE: https://mastodon.social/@grandrapidsnews/115489604721080728
This is a different take on dealing with the withholding of #SNAP money.
It's certainly like nothing I've ever seen when it comes to actions against #GOP #Policy , with dozens of local leaders doing a #HungerStrike to bring attention.
I'm happy to see this in my community as they take a stand, but with "cruelty is the point" as the real and nasty goal, I'm concerned about how this will play out.
Prisoners for Palestine’s Hunger Strike Begins on Balfour Declaration Anniversary in British Prisons
Prisoners for Palestine in the so-called United Kingdom announce a mass hunger strike: ‘We have exhausted all other options.’ Today, the first two Prisoners for Palestine — Amu Gib and Qesser Zuhrah — began refusing food, the first step in the rolling hunger strike.
Dozens of political prisoners in various prisons across Britain have announced their intention to begin a collective hunger strike on November 2nd, a date chosen for its historical significance: the anniversary of the 1917 Balfour Declaration, in which the British government expressed its official support for the Zionist project to colonise Palestine.
The action is being coordinated by the Prisoners for Palestine collective, with the support of CAGE International, and could become the largest hunger strike organised in British prisons since 1981, when ten Irish republican prisoners were martyred after 66 days on hunger strike in prisons in occupied Northern Ireland.
The prisoners denounce the British state for criminalising solidarity with Palestine and protecting the interests of the arms companies that supply the Israeli regime. For months, they have suffered punishment, isolation, censorship and aggression for their anti-colonial militancy and their commitment to the Palestinian resistance.
“We are imprisoned for trying to stop genocide”
Former political prisoners and spokespeople Audrey Corno and Francesca Nadin, both arrested for direct action against the facilities of Elbit Systems, Israel’s leading arms company, delivered a letter to the British Home Office on 20 October on behalf of the 33 people imprisoned for trying to stop the genocide in Gaza.
In that letter, the prisoners make five clear and urgent demands:
- Immediate end to all censorship and restrictions on their correspondence and communications.
- Immediate and unconditional release on bail.
- Right to a fair and transparent trial.
- Deproscription of Palestine Action.
- Permanent closure of all Elbit Systems facilities in the United Kingdom.
‘We have exhausted all other options,’ said spokespeople for the group, who stress that their arrests are entirely politically motivated. In many cases, no formal charges have been presented and individuals remain detained under anti-terrorism legislation, a tool of repression increasingly used against activists and human rights defenders.
Some prisoners have been detained for over a year without trial, in degrading conditions and with severe restrictions on family visits, religious practice and communication with the outside world.
From arms factories to prison cells
The sabotage and disruption of Elbit Systems — an Israeli company that manufactures drones and weapons used in attacks on Gaza — has become a symbol of the direct action movement for Palestine. Since 2020, Palestine Action carried out numerous occupations of factories and distribution centres linked to the Zionist military complex.
Faced with popular pressure, the British state responded with a wave of arrests, house searches and legal proceedings that criminalise those who dare to publicly denounce the United Kingdom’s complicity in war crimes in Palestine.
Prisons have thus become a new front in the struggle, where resistance continues in other forms. ‘What began as a campaign to stop the production of weapons for genocide in Gaza has turned into a struggle for freedom within prisons,’ explained one of the collective’s lawyers.
“From Guantánamo to Gaza: the same repressive machinery”
Dr Asim Qureshi, Research Director at CAGE International, described the hunger strike as “the first of its kind in at least two decades” and a step which “brings into sharp focus the violence of the carceral system in the UK”.
“From Guantánamo to Gaza, the infrastructure of authoritarian terror laws built to imprison, silence, and suppress action for Palestine and voices challenging wars and genocide must be dismantled. Prisoners are the beating heart of our movement for justice. We must honour their sacrifices and stand up to challenge the injustices they face.”
>Allegations of systematic abuse include physical assault, prolonged isolation, confiscation of correspondence and reading material, denial of medical care, and restriction of access to the Quran. Faced with the failure of their appeals and institutional indifference, prisoners have decided to resort to the last instrument of resistance left to them: their own bodies.
The continuation of a long tradition of resistance
This new strike is part of a tradition of struggle that unites British and Palestinian prisoners. In early 2025, activist Teuta ‘T’ Hoxha, one of the Filton 24, went on a 28-day hunger strike that succeeded in publicly exposing internal repression and forcing the restoration of basic rights within Peterborough Prison.
Her action sparked a wave of international solidarity: political prisoners in the United States, such as Casey Goonan and Malik Muhammad, joined in a solidarity hunger strike, denouncing the global persecution of those who support Palestine.
“We know that this is not just about getting back a job or a privilege within prison,” Hoxha said at the time, “but about asserting our dignity and rejecting the silence that the state tries to impose on us.”
Their partial victory inspired dozens of comrades to plan broader collective action capable of breaking isolation and highlighting the link between internal repression and global colonialism.
Prison as a place of struggle
The Palestinian movement has turned imprisonment into a space for resistance. Throughout the Zionist occupation, thousands of Palestinian prisoners have resorted to collective hunger strikes, uniting their bodies in a common struggle against dehumanisation.
Similarly, Irish political prisoners, South African apartheid activists and Guantanamo prisoners have shown that the prisoner’s body can become a political weapon when all other means of action have been taken away.
In the words of Palestinian leader Ahmad Sa’adat, secretary general of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine:
‘From Ansar to Attica, from Lannemezan to Nafha, prison is not just a place of confinement, but a battlefield where the oppressed confront the oppressor.’
The hunger strike by prisoners for Palestine in the United Kingdom is part of that same tradition of dignity. It is an affirmation of life and humanity in the face of colonial and prison dehumanisation.
An urgent call for international solidarity
From Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, we call on all organisations, movements and individuals in solidarity to amplify the voices of those who are resisting behind the walls of British prisons today, to put pressure on the authorities and to denounce the criminalisation of solidarity with Palestine.
“After we are gone, what will you say you did? Were you with us in our struggle, or did you conform to the very system that led us to our deaths?” Irish martyr Patsy O’Hara during his hunger strike in 1981.
Today, those words resonate strongly from prisons in the United Kingdom to cells under occupation in Palestine.
Prisoners for Palestine challenge us all: their resistance holds up a mirror to our collective responsibility.
source: Samidoun
Paraguay: Political Prisoners on Hunger Strike
On October 28, Paraguayan political prisoners began a hunger strike to press three fundamental demands. Accused of being members of the Paraguayan People’s Army (EPP) guerrilla group, Carmen and Laura Villalba and Francisca Andino are demanding the right to study and read, an end to the torture system, and that Carmen Villalba (see photo) be allowed to actively participate in the search for her daughter Lichita, who has been missing for five years.
Source: https://secoursrouge.org/paraguay-greves-de-la-faim-de-prisonnieres-politiques/
https://abolitionmedia.noblogs.org/?p=22412
#hungerStrike #paraguay #paraguayanPeoplesArmy #PoliticalPrisoners #southAmerica
Batukeshwar Dutta (or Dutta; 18 November 1910 – 20 July 1965) was an #Indian #socialist and independence fighter in the early 1900s. He is best known for having exploded two bombs, along with #BhagatSingh, in the #CentralLegislativeAssembly in #NewDelhi on 8 April 1929. After they were arrested, tried and imprisoned for life, he and Singh initiated a historic #hungerStrike protesting against the abusive treatment of Indian political prisoners, and eventually secured some rights for them.
Imminent Mass Hunger Strike Across UK Prisons
Dozens of political prisoners in the so-called United Kingdom who have endured months of targeted abuse behind bars due to their support for Palestinian liberation are announcing their intention to launch a hunger strike.
Prisoners for Palestine representative Audrey Corno (who I interviewed last month) says it would mark the largest coordinated prisoners’ hunger strike in the UK since the Irish Republican Army/Irish National Liberation Army hunger strike in the occupied North of Ireland in 1981, when ten prisoners of war were martyred.
On 20 October, Audrey and Francesca Nadin, both of whom have spent time behind bars for direct actions against zionist weapons companies, delivered a letter to the UK Home Secretary “on behalf of the 33 people unjustly locked up as a result of taking action to stop the genocide in Palestine.”
They have five demands: an end to all censorship of their mail and communications; immediate and unconditional release on bail; the right to a fair trial; the removal of Pal Action from the proscribed “terrorist” list; and the closure of all Elbit Systems facilities in the UK.
The prisoners, who include members of the Filton 24 and the Brize Norton 5, have been detained without charge in multiple UK jails under the “Terrorism Act,” in some cases for over a year. Thus far, appeals for the prisoners to be released on bail have been unsuccessful.
Large-scale collective hunger strikes have the power to make bold and far-reaching demands that go beyond improvements to the prisoners’ immediate conditions. The Prisoners for Palestine are clearly aware of this, as evidenced by the strategic way they have folded more immediate demands around their legal cases and prison conditions into broader attacks on Elbit Systems. For instance, they argue that their right to a fair trial should include transparency regarding any and all meetings that have taken place between UK, Israeli, and Elbit officials, as well as “any others involved in coordinating the ongoing witch-hunt of actionists and campaigners.” In this way, the hunger strike is a continuation of the direct actions they allegedly took against the same enemy target outside the prison walls — they are just struggling on a new terrain.
The hunger strike marks a significant escalation in resistance in response to the extensive discrimination and mistreatment the Pal Action prisoners have suffered behind bars — deprivation of appropriate religious services and the Qur’an, prevention of family contact and visits, isolation in rural facilities, violent assaults, and confiscations of their mail and property — as well as the failure of their repeated attempts to appeal to UK prison administration and government authorities.
It also builds on the heels of a successful 28-day hunger strike undertaken by Teuta “T” Hoxha, one of the Filton 24, earlier this year, when she built significant international pressure against HMP Peterborough to reinstate her mail, recreational activities, and library job. While her job in the prison was not ultimately restored, Hoxha won all of her other demands and succeeded in exposing the existence of a Joint Extremism Unit (JEU) specially assigned to target, isolate, and punish the prisoners for Palestine.
In addition to these successes, T. Hoxha’s strike had wide-reaching effects on the international Palestine solidarity movement, drawing unprecedented attention to the draconian repression faced by activists around the world who have chosen to take direct action against their countries’ participation in the Palestinian genocide. In the so-called United States, political prisoners Casey Goonan and Malik Muhammad joined in solidarity hunger strikes with Hoxha, having experienced similar political targeting and abuses. (And it is worth noting, politicized prisoner Shine White is on hunger strike in North Carolina right now for similar reasons.)
The international pressure and solidarity galvanized by T. Hoxha’s hunger strike, as well as her success in winning her demands, raised consciousness in her fellow co-defendants and political prisoners, including those locked up for not overtly political reasons. Her action showed them that when you fight, you win. Activists have hinted that this impending hunger strike would have wider support from the general prison population.
“The prisoners are firm in the knowledge that they have massive support both here and internationally, and that the people will come together to take action in their name. This is a direct result of not only the government’s appalling actions towards the prisoners, but also their active participation in the genocide in Gaza,” said Dr. Asim Qureshi, Research Director at CAGE International, negotiating partners for the hunger strikers alongside Prisoners for Palestine.
“This hunger strike, if it goes ahead, will be the first of its kind in at least two decades. It brings into sharp focus the violence of the carceral system in the UK, a violence we often associate with places afar. From Guantánamo to Gaza, the infrastructure of authoritarian terror laws built to imprison, silence, and suppress action for Palestine and voices challenging wars and genocide must be dismantled,” Qureshi added. “Prisoners are the beating heart of our movement for justice. We must honour their sacrifices and stand up to challenge the injustices they face.”
Audrey noted in our previous interview that allowing time in advance for outside supporters to prepare for the strike and maximize its impact and reach would be key. The announcement of a collective hunger strike weeks in advance raises the question of whether more international prisoners will participate this time around, and just how big it will grow. People in the political prisoners’ movement should alert as many inside comrades as possible, so that they know this act of collective resistance is taking place, and can choose to show their solidarity through words or actions if they wish.
Prisoners for Palestine and CAGE International have given the UK government until 24 October to respond to their demands. The strike is set to begin on 2 November, a date with historical resonance marking the anniversary of the 1917 Balfour Declaration, when the UK granted official support for zionist settler colonialism in Palestine. Activists in the political prisoners’ movement everywhere should take note of the way that the prisoners and their supporters have refused to back down even in the face of immense repression, insisting on politicizing every aspect of the strike.
On Prisoners as Political Subjects
Hunger strikes have played a central role in the Palestinian prisoners movement, the Irish national liberation movement, the Red Army Faction in West Germany, South Africa, India, and elsewhere.
Over the course of the zionist occupation, Palestinian prisoners have gone on mass hunger strikes, often thousands at a time, unified across different political factions. In the 1970s and 80s, several Palestinian prisoners died from being force fed, a practice reinstated by the zionist occupation in 2012. These strikes have shaped the broader movement — the Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network developed out of the September/October 2011 PFLP prisoners’ hunger strike to release Ahmad Sa’adat, general secretary of the party, from solitary confinement. “From Ansar [Palestine] to Attica [New York] to Lannemezan [the French prison where Georges Abdallah was held], the prison is not only a physical space of confinement but a site of struggle of the oppressed confronting the oppressor,” Sa’adat wrote.
Similarly, in 2013, US inmates in long-term solitary confinement at Pelican Bay State Prison organized a massive strike, resulting in 29,000 California prisoners protesting, refusing work and classes, and 100 inmates across two prisons refusing food until they won reforms. In the US military’s Guantánamo Bay detention camp (on illegally occupied Cuban territory), hundreds of prisoners have gone on hunger strike and been violently force-fed since 2002, with the news repressed by military censorship. Mansoor Adayfi, a Yemeni detained indefinitely without charge, went on hunger strike and was force-fed for two years. Now free, he works with CAGE International and is supporting the impending UK political prisoners’ strike, and will speak on a call with them on 25 October.
A hunger strike is not a tactic taken up lightly. It is a choice of resistance made in conditions of captivity, when your body is your only weapon left, since the state has taken every other means of resistance away.
We are not talking about the performative stunts of one to three-day fasts undertaken by non-prisoners, ridiculously labeled as “hunger strikes” for Gaza. These are ineffective because they are conducted outside the context of captivity and thus have no leverage — they are also offensive, in that they make a mockery of hunger strikes by co-opting and watering down what is in reality a tactic available only as a last resort to captives under conditions of extreme duress, who sometimes die slow and excruciating deaths over the course of their strikes. (For those of us on the outside, with more means at our disposal for resistance, our duty is not to passively weaken our bodies but to strengthen ourselves to go on the offensive.)
Writing of the martyred Palestinian revolutionary Walid Daqqa and his long history of captivity in Zionist dungeons, Kaleem Hawa observed how the hunger strike, when wielded in captivity, enacts a reversal of power relations:
“The [hunger strike] flips the normal script on its head, of docility as the sentence, hunger as the jury. [It is] a snapping of the colonists’ tools, a reminder that dignity persists within the colonized subject, a reconfiguration of the colonial order both within the prison and beyond it…the hunger striker does not run away from life, but towards freedom; their act rejoins the body-in-stasis and self-in-isolation toward a politically committed whole…insisting upon the right to narrate its own captivity.”
Unfortunately, some outside activists chose to condemn T. Hoxha’s act of resistance, framing the impulse to go on hunger strike as suicidal and thus inherently immoral. They questioned why she would choose to risk her life for such seemingly miniscule demands as the restoration of a job in the prison library. Couldn’t she just let it go? Yet as Hoxha herself emphasized in a recorded message to Casey Goonan: “We both know this isn’t about a library job, but the principle behind it.” Hoxha’s insistence that it is not the content of the demand itself that is important but the principle behind it is echoed by thousands of other hunger strikers throughout history, who have preferred to risk and in many cases sacrifice their own lives rather than accept the dehumanizing conditions of prison life.
After Casey began their own hunger strike in solidarity with T. Hoxha some two weeks after she had begun hers, some outside activists in the US similarly condemned their action as a form of self-harm, even going so far as to equate it to overdosing on drugs. This “self-harm” was defined in both physical and legal — though notably not political — terms. Because Casey is diabetic, it was argued, and their sentencing had not yet occurred, a solidarity hunger strike would not only incur serious health consequences, but could also jeopardize their legal case. These outside activists further claimed that there was nothing US supporters could do to help T. Hoxha, since she was imprisoned in a different country, thus insisting that Casey’s act of solidarity was not only reckless but futile. Comrades who supported Casey’s hunger strike and actively upheld the militancy of their actions were publicly slandered and even blamed for the harsh 19-year sentence handed down by the state weeks after the strike ended.
Such instances of attacking and denouncing acts of bravery, solidarity, and principled resistance in the name of “concern” and “safety” are not isolated. Ironically, while these voices claim that it is those who uphold principled resistance that pose a threat and a danger to the prisoners, it is precisely the insistence on condemning and discouraging resistance to state repression that represents the most dangerous trend of all. As Shaka Shakur, a New Afrikan political prisoner, observed in a recent interview:
“It’s a tendency for us [on the US left] to try and struggle within the boundaries set by the oppressor. You cannot say that you anti-state, or you anti-government, you anti-capitalism, you anti-imperialism, and all of your organizing and concept of resisting is within the legality, the confines, the boundaries of your opposition, thus allowing your opposition to dictate what your strategies and tactics are. That recognizes a certain legitimacy for the very system you say you fighting to destroy or tear down or change. So you doomed already.”
In the same interview, Shakur extends his criticism of the pacifism he sees as hampering the progress of the US left in general to the culture of prisoner support and prison organizing in particular:
“You know, I think it’s a tactical mistake, a strategic mistake, that when you’re talking about supporting prisoners, political prisoners in particular — well, a movement that says it supports political prisoners or prisoners of war that only growls but refuses to bite, is a sham movement. It’s a sham movement. If the state knows that it can come in here and kill me, orchestrate my murder, without any type of real repercussions, or any kind of ripple effect, then that speaks miles to the seriousness of the movement that supports us. And that’s a tragedy. And unfortunately, too many of us has fallen to that.”
Shakur also notes how the concept of prisoner solidarity has been watered down to merely supporting prisoners materially or technically — such as through sending money or letters — but not politically, a criticism we have also uplifted elsewhere. The result is that when prisoners are targeted with repression or even murder for their political views and acts, there is no equivalent consequence exacted on the prison system by outside supporters. Shakur continues:
“So when you talk about mutual aid and support, where does that elevate to some other things, like some other levels of resistance and struggle and direct action? You know, why is it that all our elders got to wait till they’re 70, 80 something years old and on their death bed to be freed, to be released? You know what I’m saying? And so when we talk about the whole concept of abolition, what does that really mean? How can we make that manifest? What are the stages of development in terms of sharpening those contradictions and escalating struggle and resistance to actually bring about abolition? Are we trying to support our people, our comrades in prison to be comfortable, or are we trying to make these motherfuckers ungovernable? You know, is we tryna send money or are we tryna free some people?”
In the face of brutal state repression, we cannot afford to allow concepts of “safetyism” or “legal advice” to take the helm of our political strategy and collective struggle. If all of us prioritize our individual safety over collective liberation, our struggle will never advance. Political prisoners are imprisoned for political acts of resistance to the state, so their fight for freedom must be waged on political terms and terrain as well.
The history of prisoner hunger strikes show that it is in fact the opposite of a suicidal impulse. Instead, it is the reassertion of a prisoner’s life and humanity under the most dehumanizing conditions imaginable, the insistence on one’s revolutionary subjecthood when the state has reduced them to a passive object. For those of us on the outside, it is our duty to uphold this narrative and the risks our comrades choose to take, despite our personal concerns for their safety and well-being.
Silence is fatal. Even as T. Hoxha and Casey’s strike picked up attention, many major Palestine solidarity organizations failed, or outright refused, to uplift their simple requests for people to call and email the jail demanding that T. Hoxha receive the urgent medical care she required. Assuming the imperialist, genocidal UK government does not suddenly gain a conscience and meet the five straightforward demands of the imminent and this time much larger hunger strike, it is our duty to lend our unconditional support to those on the inside undertaking these acts of bravery.
Let us surround the dungeons where our prisoners are held captive.
Let us ensure their resistance and sacrifices reverberate loudly and widely enough that the prison walls crumble down.
To end with the words of one of 10 Irish republicans martyred in the 1981 hunger strike, Patsy O’Hara of the Irish National Liberation Army: “After we are gone, what will you say you were doing? Will you say that you were with us in our struggle or were you conforming to the very system that drove us to our deaths?”
For updates, follow:
- Prisoners for Palestine (Instagram, Twitter, Youtube, website).
- T’s prison notes
- Zahra’s substack
- Filton 24 substack
- CAGE International
Source: Calla Walsk
Cuban man on hunger strike in Eswatini Prison after US deportation http://newsfeed.facilit8.network/TNq9xZ #Cuba #HungerStrike #Eswatini #HumanRights #JusticeForCuban
"When speech about Palestine has been smeared as “antisemitic” and prohibited, an entire constituency of #students has likewise experienced the silencing of their #grief, which is too often bypassed even in the discourse of #socialjustice. #Palestine is here at UC #Berkeley, as well as there, in the ongoing Israeli #genocide in #Gaza."
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