The Price of Conscience

Why Britain's Prison Hunger Strikers Deserve Our Solidarity

Introduction

In December 2025, a crisis of conscience unfolds within British prisons. Eight young people, activists who dared to challenge their government’s complicity in genocide, are slowly dying of starvation. They are not convicted criminals. They have not committed acts of violence against other human beings. They have only dared to disrupt machines of death, to interfere with the gears of military-industrial profit that facilitate ethnic cleansing in Palestine. For this, they are being left to die in custody, their bodies consuming themselves organ by organ, while the British government watches with calculated indifference. This is not a story about extremism or terrorism. This is a story about ordinary people pushed to extraordinary measures by an unjust state. It is a story about what happens when legal systems become instruments of oppression rather than justice. And it is a story that demands our immediate attention and solidarity.

The Prisoners: Who They Are

The activists now on hunger strike come from diverse backgrounds, united by a simple conviction: that weapons manufacturing facilities and military infrastructure used to facilitate genocide cannot be allowed to operate in silence. They are the Filton 24 and the Brize Norton 5, names that have become synonymous with principled resistance in Britain. Among them is Qesser Zuhrah, twenty years old, held at HMP Bronzefield in Surrey. As of December 19, 2025, she has refused food for forty-seven days. At day forty-seven, her body has entered what medical professionals describe as “the final stage of starvation.” She is now in a window where death can occur at any time without warning. Amu Gib has also endured forty-seven days. Heba Muraski, forty-six days. Teuta Hoxha, forty days. Kamran Ahmed, thirty-nine days. They continue, despite knowing what awaits them: organ failure, cardiac arrest, respiratory collapse.

When Qesser was rushed to hospital in mid-December, her sister Ella stood before cameras and described what their family is living through. “Qesser is only 20 years old and has been held in prison for over a year without trial,” she said, her voice steady despite visible anguish. “All she wants is to go home and for this government to stop manufacturing genocide. She has so much life left to live, please let her live.” These are not the words of a political operative or activist speaking in slogans. These are the words of a sister watching her sibling slowly die, pleading with a state apparatus that has shown itself incapable of compassion. These are not hardened criminals with decades of violent behavior. These are young people in the prime of their lives, choosing to sacrifice everything: their health, their futures, potentially their lives. They do this because they cannot accept that their government profits from Palestinian suffering. They do this because they have exhausted every other option available to them.

Why They Are Here: The Actions

The Filton action occurred in August 2024. A group of Palestine Action supporters drove a modified prison van through the perimeter fence of Elbit Systems’ Research, Development, and Manufacturing Hub near Bristol. Elbit Systems is Israel’s largest weapons manufacturer. Inside that facility, components destined for drones are produced. Drones that have rained death on civilians in Gaza. Six activists entered the building and began dismantling production machinery. They destroyed quadcopter drones that Elbit had sold to be used in the ongoing offensive. The action caused approximately 7 to 15 million pounds in damage. No human beings were harmed. No explosives were used. The activists were arrested at the scene. What happened next was extraordinary. While in police custody, they were re-arrested under counter-terrorism legislation, despite never being charged with any terror-related offence. This allowed authorities to extend detention periods dramatically. Over the following months, in a series of dawn raids, eighteen additional activists were arrested, often alongside family members who were subsequently released. The authorities used the same counter-terrorism apparatus, creating a false aura of “terrorism connection” while charging them with conventional property damage crimes.

The Brize Norton action followed in June 2025. Activists entered RAF Brize Norton, a military base that serves as a transport and refuelling hub for flights to RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus. From Akrotiri, daily surveillance flights depart to monitor Gaza, gathering intelligence that enables targeting decisions. The activists sprayed blood-red paint on two Voyager aircraft. The paint was harmless. The message was unmistakable: your aircraft surveil genocide. Five people were remanded in custody for this action. Again, counter-terrorism laws were invoked. Again, bail was denied. Again, charges fell short of terrorism but the shadow of that designation hung over their cases. The pattern is clear: activists engaged in property damage to military infrastructure are having their actions reframed through the lens of counter-terrorism law, extending detention periods and poisoning the legal atmosphere in which they will be tried.

The Criminalization of Conscience

What makes these cases extraordinary is not the actions themselves but the legal architecture used to punish them. On July 5, 2025, the British government proscribed Palestine Action as a terrorist organization under the Terrorism Act 2000. This proscription was explicitly justified by references to the Brize Norton paint-spraying action. Let us be clear about what this means. It means that attending a Palestine Action meeting is potentially an offence. It means that expressing support for Palestine Action can result in charges under the legislation, with penalties reaching fourteen years in prison. It means that the British state has criminalized not violence, but association with a political cause. The individuals now on hunger strike have never been convicted under these terrorism provisions. Instead, they remain on remand, detained without conviction, facing charges of criminal damage, burglary, and conspiracy. Yet the proscription has poisoned the legal atmosphere around their cases. Prison authorities treat them as security threats. The prosecution alleges “terrorism connection” despite absence of terrorism charges. Bail conditions are harsh. Prison conditions are designed to break resistance.

One prisoner, Lewie Chiaramello, is diabetic. He participates in a partial hunger strike, refusing food every other day, placing his health in extraordinary jeopardy. The prison service has shown no consideration for his medical vulnerability. This is not management of a hunger strike. This is deliberate indifference to suffering. For a person with diabetes to undertake even a partial hunger strike is extraordinarily dangerous. His pancreas cannot regulate blood sugar properly. His body cannot sustain the metabolic stress of fasting. Yet the system continues, day after day, allowing his body to deteriorate. This is not an isolated incident of institutional negligence. It is part of a pattern of deliberate cruelty designed to break the prisoners’ resolve.

The Medical Reality: A Body Breaking Down

Dr. James Smith, an emergency medicine physician and lecturer at University College London, has examined the medical situation directly. His assessment is unambiguous: “From a medical perspective, after three weeks the body has exhausted fat stores and begins to break down muscle and organ tissue in order to generate enough energy to maintain vital bodily functions.” After that threshold, he explains, every passing day brings escalating danger. The heart muscle begins to break down. The kidneys lose capacity to filter effectively. Respiratory muscles weaken. The immune system deteriorates to a point where infections become catastrophic. The body becomes unpredictable. Sudden cardiac events, organ failure, respiratory collapse can occur without warning. Two prisoners have now surpassed forty-seven days. They are past the point where recovery without permanent organ damage is possible. They are approaching the point where death is not a distant possibility but an approaching certainty. The medical consensus among healthcare professionals is that these prisoners are in the final stage of a process that will almost certainly end in death.

The prison authorities have responded with bureaucratic indifference. When Qesser Zuhrah was unable to stand, when she reported severe chest pain and difficulty breathing, the prison denied ambulance entry for fourteen hours. It took an overnight protest with MP Zarah Sultana standing outside the prison gates in December cold, with Green Party peer Jenny Jones raising her voice, with ordinary people refusing to leave, to force the system to provide emergency care. Even then, Qesser discharged herself against medical advice. Why? Because hospitalized prisoners are denied contact with their families. She chose the agony of untreated illness rather than accept isolation from those she loves. This reveals the barbarism embedded in the system. Even when a young woman is dying, the apparatus of state punishment continues. Separation from loved ones is considered a legitimate tool of control, even as that person’s organs are shutting down. The cruelty is not accidental. It is structural.

The Demands: What They Ask

The prisoners’ demands are not revolutionary. They have submitted these demands repeatedly to the British government. Release on bail while awaiting trial, as is standard for non-violent offences. They have been held without conviction for over a year. In conventional criminal justice systems, this would be considered outrageous detention. The right to a fair trial without terrorism framing. Let them be tried on the actual charges: property damage. Not in the shadow of proscription and terrorism allegations designed to poison jurors before proceedings begin. Dropping of all terror-related charges and language. They did not conduct terrorism. They conducted direct action against military infrastructure complicit in genocide. The de-proscription of Palestine Action. This organization has committed no acts of violence against people. It has engaged in disruption of weapons manufacturing and military operations designed to interfere with the machinery of ethnic cleansing. These demands are modest. These demands ask for the most basic rights: bail for unconvicted prisoners, fair trials without propaganda, cessation of unjust proscription laws designed to criminalize dissent.

The British government has rejected every demand. Justice Secretary David Lammy has refused to meet with the prisoners’ lawyers. When confronted about the crisis, he claimed ignorance, a claim contradicted by dozens of MPs who have raised the issue repeatedly. The government has chosen silence and calculated cruelty as its response. David Lammy, a man who has positioned himself as a champion of human rights, who has spoken eloquently about international justice and accountability, has turned away from his own citizens dying in prison. This is not oversight. This is choice. The government has prioritized its relationship with Israel and its profit arrangements with weapons manufacturers over the lives of eight young British citizens.

The Families: Watching Loved Ones Die

Shahmina Alam is the sister of Kamran Ahmed, one of the hunger strikers. She stood before cameras in December and described her family’s nightmare: “His heart is slowing down. We check his heartbeat every few days. We are terrified. What are they waiting for, for it to stop?” Her words carry the weight of genuine agony. She is not speaking as an activist or a political operative. She is speaking as a sister who fears her brother will die in custody, unconvicted, for the crime of attempting to disrupt weapons manufacturing. The lived experience of families watching their relatives die in state custody is not a political abstraction. It is a daily horror. Ella, Qesser’s sister, was similarly direct. Her twenty-year-old sister is dying. The prison system is enabling that death. The government is refusing to intervene. Ella’s response is not rage alone, though rage is understandable. It is a desperate plea: “She has so much life left to live. Please let her live.” These are not the words of people engaged in propaganda. These are the words of people watching family members commit slow suicide to protest injustice, and watching a state callously refuse to negotiate.

Why This Matters: The Broader Significance

The cases of these eight prisoners matter far beyond their individual fates. They represent a fundamental question about what kind of society Britain intends to be. Will Britain be a society where citizens can organize to challenge state-enabled genocide? Or will it be a society where such challenges result in imprisonment, where legal systems are weaponized against dissent, where counter-terrorism apparatus is repurposed to criminalize conscience? The proscription of Palestine Action is unprecedented in scope and severity. It has been condemned by United Nations experts, human rights organizations including Amnesty International, constitutional lawyers, and civil liberties defenders. The legislation underlying it allows prosecution not for violence or material support to violent actors, but for expressing opinions supportive of the organization if done “recklessly.” Since proscription, nearly 2,500 people have been arrested for Palestine Action-related offences. Many were engaged in entirely peaceful protest. One man was arrested for wearing a “Plasticine Action” shirt, a joke. Another for holding a sign. The net has become so broad, the definition of support so elastic, that effective criminalization of Palestine solidarity has occurred.

If Britain allows this to continue, if the government lets these prisoners die without conceding to even their most basic demands, it establishes a precedent: that direct action against genocide can be met with indefinite detention, that hunger strikes will be allowed to proceed to death, that the state’s interest in weapons manufacturing profits supersedes its obligation to protect citizens’ lives. This precedent will reverberate far beyond Palestine. Any future movement challenging state policy, whether on environmental destruction, nuclear weapons, or corporate exploitation, will face the same legal architecture. The proscription laws will expand their reach. Counter-terrorism legislation will be stretched further. The capacity for dissent will narrow. What is being tested now, with these eight prisoners, is whether the British state has the power to criminalize conscience itself.

International Dimensions: Solidarity Across Borders

The hunger strike has been described as the largest coordinated prison hunger strike in British history since the 1981 H-Block strike in Northern Ireland. That historical parallel is not accidental. It reflects the willingness of activists to endure what political prisoners in Ireland endured: the ultimate sacrifice for principle. From Dublin to Delhi, solidarity actions are emerging. Irish activists, drawing on their own history of anti-colonial struggle and the memory of Bobby Sands, have mobilized outside British embassies. In Israel itself, Israeli peace activists have demonstrated in support of the prisoners, holding signs reading “Free Palestine Action Prisoners.” Jewish Voice for Labour and Global Jews for Palestine have issued statements condemning the imprisonment and the proscription. This is not a fringe cause. The prisoners have mobilized genuine international solidarity because their case represents something universal: the right to resist occupation, the right to challenge complicity in ethnic cleansing, the right to do so without facing death in prison. When Israeli activists stand alongside British prisoners, when Irish revolutionaries connect their struggle to Palestinian solidarity, the message is clear: this transcends borders and national boundaries. This is about the fundamental right to resist oppression.

The Role of the State: Calculated Cruelty

What is remarkable about the government’s response is its deliberateness. This is not negligence. This is policy. The government has options. It could grant bail. It could meet the prisoners’ lawyers. It could negotiate. It could de-proscribe Palestine Action. It could move the trials forward. It could acknowledge that property damage to military infrastructure is not terrorism. It could prioritize the lives of its own citizens over the interests of weapons manufacturers. It has chosen none of these options. Instead, it has chosen to allow hunger strikers to waste away, to deny them bail despite the lack of terrorism charges, to refuse even to meet with their legal representatives. This is a deliberate decision by a state that values its relationship with Israel and the profits of weapons manufacturers more than the lives of its own citizens.

Justice Secretary David Lammy’s claim of ignorance is particularly revealing. Here is a man who was once presented as a champion of human rights, who has held senior cabinet positions, who is confronted daily with evidence of the crisis: letters from families, statements from medical professionals, appeals from MPs across the political spectrum. And he claims he knows nothing about it. This is not ignorance. This is willful blindness. It is the stance of a political leader who has made the calculation that acknowledging the crisis would require action, and action would require challenging the security state, the weapons manufacturers, the special relationship with Israel. Better, from the government’s perspective, to maintain silence and let the prisoners die. The bodies of Qesser Zuhrah, Amu Gib, and their fellow strikers serve a purpose for this government: they are warnings to others. Challenge weapons manufacturing. Disrupt genocide complicity. Die in prison for your convictions.

Why Direct Action Was Necessary

Understanding why these activists chose direct action requires understanding what legal channels have failed them. For decades, Palestinians have appealed to the international community. Millions have marched. Petitions have been circulated. Legal cases have been filed. Israel has conducted ethnic cleansing, apartheid, and what the International Court of Justice is investigating as genocide, and the international system has been powerless or unwilling to stop it. Britain, meanwhile, has not merely tolerated Israeli actions. It has profited from them. British weapons manufacturers supply components for Israeli weapons systems. British military facilities enable Israeli operations. British intelligence shares information with Israeli intelligence services. Britain is not a neutral observer. It is a participant. Given this reality, given that legal channels for protest have been exhausted, given that the state is complicit in genocide and profits from that complicity, what options remain to those who cannot accept that complicity?

Palestine Action chose disruption. It targeted weapons manufacturing facilities and military infrastructure. It avoided violence against people. It used property damage as a language of protest: breaking the machines that kill Palestinians. This is not terrorism. This is direct action against genocide, conducted with remarkable restraint and moral clarity. The state’s response: proscription, indefinite detention, criminalization, and now allowing hunger strikers to die. This reveals the state’s priorities. It will not tolerate effective challenge to its genocide complicity. It will not negotiate with those who disrupt profit flows. It will criminalize, imprison, and allow to die those who refuse to accept participation in ethnic cleansing. The prisoners understood this from the beginning. They knew the risks. They proceeded anyway, because some things matter more than personal safety.

The Hunger Strike as Moral Testimony

What makes the hunger strike so significant is that it represents prisoners taking control of the one domain where they retain agency: their own bodies. In a system designed to break resistance, hunger strike is the ultimate assertion of individual will. These prisoners have said: we will not accept unjust imprisonment in silence. We will not normalize detention without trial. We will not legitimize a legal system that weaponizes counter-terrorism laws against dissent. We will use our bodies to bear witness to injustice. For forty-seven days, Qesser Zuhrah has said no. For forty-seven days, Amu Gib has said no. The medical establishment warns they are dying, that death is imminent, that recovery is impossible, and still they continue. This is not suicidal despair. This is clear-eyed determination that some things matter more than individual survival. Justice matters. The liberation of Palestine matters. Resisting the state’s attempt to criminalize conscience matters.

The hunger strike will either end with government capitulation, with bail granted, with trials conducted fairly, with proscription lifted, or it will end with death. There is no middle ground. The prisoners have made that choice. The burden now rests on the British state and on British society to decide whether we will allow that death, or whether we will force the state to negotiate. Every day that passes without government action is a day closer to irreversible medical crisis. Every day of silence is a day of complicity.

Conclusion

The time for measured petitions and polite appeals has passed. Qesser Zuhrah is dying. Amu Gib is dying. Heba Muraski, Teuta Hoxha, Kamran Ahmed, Jon Cink, Muhammad Umer Khalid, and Lewie Chiaramello are all dying in custody, unconvicted, for the crime of challenging weapons manufacturing that facilitates genocide. The British government has made clear it will not intervene voluntarily. Justice Secretary David Lammy will not meet with lawyers. The prison system will not grant medical relief. The courts will not expedite trials. The state has chosen to allow death rather than concede to reasonable demands. This is unconscionable. This is a stain on Britain’s claim to be a rights-respecting democracy. This is evidence that the legal system has been corrupted into an instrument of oppression.

The prisoners for Palestine have done what they can. They have endured forty-seven days of starvation. They have sacrificed their health and risked their lives. They have maintained their moral clarity in the face of state indifference and institutional cruelty. Now the burden falls on the rest of us. We must make clear that the state will pay a political and social price for allowing these prisoners to die. We must escalate pressure through protest, through political advocacy, through media coverage, through international solidarity. We must make it politically impossible for the government to maintain its position of cold indifference. These are our fellow citizens. They are young, they are principled, they are dying for their conviction that genocide complicity is intolerable. They deserve to live. They deserve bail. They deserve fair trials. They deserve to have their voices heard. The question before British society is not whether Palestine Action was justified in its actions. That is debatable and reasonable people can disagree. The question is whether we will tolerate our government allowing young people to starve to death in custody, unconvicted, as punishment for political dissent. To that question, there can be only one answer: No. We will not. We cannot. The time to act is now, before it is too late.