Living Rent condemns the UK Government’s inhumane treatment of those currently imprisoned for taking direct action against the genocide in Palestine. At least thirty three people remain imprisoned without conviction, without trial dates or bail conditions being set, some for as long as two years.
As of 2nd November, having exhausted all legal avenues to achieve basic human rights, eight of these prisoners began an open-ended hunger strike. Shamefully, media reporting on their situation has been minimal. With each passing day the lives of these brave hunger strikers are at grave risk while the UK Government remains complicit in Israel’s ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people. Those currently imprisoned took action to disrupt the flow of weapons from Britain which continue to murder, maim, and destroy homes and communities in Palestine. We know why Prisoners for Palestine are being treated in this way - it is a sustained attack on the right to protest and an attempt to instil fear into all principled people who oppose the genocide. It is as a direct result of the British Government’s authoritarian turn that these prisoners have been driven into a hunger strike, putting them at risk of long-term health implications and even death.
The UK Government remains complicit in the genocide, and the eight hunger strikers have been part of a wave of direct action forced by our Government’s failure to act in line with the democratic will of the people. Living Rent stands in solidarity with the hunger strikers and supports their urgent demands for humane treatment in accordance with British law. The Government must meet their demands by granting bail immediately, removing all censorship preventing the prisoners’ freedom of communication, by upholding and enforcing their right to a fair trial, and by ending the funneling of public funds into the machinery of genocide.
We encourage all Living Rent members to write to the Home Secretary David Lammy and their local MP to demand the hunger strikers’ demands are met in full, We also encourage our members to express solidarity by writing directly to the hunger strikers in prison, attending demos and vigils in support of their demands and to support Prisoners for Palestine using the contained in the toolkit here https://prisonersforpalestine.org/support/
The barbaric treatment of these prisoners cannot be allowed to continue in our names.
