Qesser Zuhrah, Amu Gib, Heba Muraisi, Jony Cink, T Hoxha, and Kamran Ahmed have now been on hunger strike for a month.¹ On December 4th Muhammad Umer Khalid joined the open-ended hunger strike. An additional eighth prisoner who is diabetic, Lewie Chiaramello, has joined in a partial hunger strike which has serious health implications. Two of the hunger strikers, Kamran Ahmed and then T Hoxha, have been hospitalised.² The Prisoners for Palestine hunger strike is the biggest collective hunger strike in the prisons of the British state since the Irish Republican hunger strike of 1981. The British state has still not acknowledged the hunger strike, let alone engaged with the prisoners. Democratic Socialists of Your Party express our love, admiration and solidarity for the hunger strikers.

DSYP also express our support for the five demands of the hunger strikers, which we reproduce below:

• End all Censorship
• Immediate Bail
• Right to a Fair Trial
• Deproscribe
• Shut Down Elbit

By the time of their trials, some of the prisoners “will have been imprisoned for nearly two years.” The use of long periods of remand as a punishment is the result, in many cases, of the British state knowing that juries have often been reluctant to convict those who have taken direct action against genocide. The demand for deproscription includes not only the demand that Palestine Action be proscribed but also the end of the Prevent strategy. It also includes the dropping of all terror-related charges and the stopping of the use of counter-terror laws being used to target those engaged in protest and direct action. Counter-terror procedures have been used extensively to mistreat those being held on remand for taking action against genocide, including denial of religious freedom, denial of reading materials and correspondence, restrictions on visits and being held in solitary confinement.

None of the demands made by the hunger strikers are “extreme”. The hunger strikers have been forced into extreme tactics by the British state and its enabling of genocide and abuse of those who have challenged it most bravely and directly. The British state that signs contracts with Elbit Systems worth billions of pounds and allows, even protects, the production of means of genocide is also the British state that mistreats prisoners and attempts to ignore the hunger strike.

Ten Irish Republican hunger strikers were martyred in 1981. “There is”, writes Bernadette McAliskey, drawing the parallels between 1981 and today, “no barbarity, no abuse of the political system, no abuse of the law to cover their own breaches of International Law, to which a British government still imbued by Colonial entitlement and privilege would not stoop.”

T Hoxha has written, “our demands are simple and I want it stated for the record that our collective strike should only be interpreted as a will to live, using nothing but our hunger to resist the imperial war machine. We are prepared to push to the very end for these rights. Any harm we sustain lies at the door of the government.”

The British state has no conscience. If as Jony Cink argues, “we in the Global North and benefiting from the status quo in some shape or form…we have a duty to resist”, then those of us outside the prisons have our own duties of solidarity to the hunger strikers. We must do everything we can to pressure the British state into conceding the necessary demands of the prisoners, and we call on others to do the same.

As members of Your Party, we welcome the interventions attempted by Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana, especially Sultana’s visit to Qesser Zuhrah in prison yesterday. We also encourage Your Party members to sign the open letter calling on MPs associated with Your Party to take action in solidarity with the hunger strikers. Support for the hunger strikers has not been confined to Your Party politicians; Mothin Ali, the Deputy Leader of the Greens has also visited hunger striking prisoners.

A toolkit has been produced to highlight actions in support of the hunger strike. We call on comrades to take these actions in solidarity with the prisoners, particularly attending the protest outside Downing Street on 11 December.

DSYP will be writing to the prisoners, contacting the prisons to amplify demands, attempting to publicise the struggle, and supporting any demonstrations that are called in support of the hunger strikers. After a month or more on hunger strike, the prisoners are reaching a critical point.

Our prisoners are at the heart of the struggle in solidarity with the liberation of Palestine. Free them all. Free Palestine.