Last week, Prisoners for Palestine achieved a significant victory as Kamran, Heba and Lewie started re-feeding after one of the key demands of their hunger strike was met – with the MoD refusing to award Elbit Systems a £2bn contract for training British troops.
Their hunger strike also achieved other major human rights victories for the prisoners, including the prison accepting Heba’s request to return to Bronzefeld prison and ending her deliberate isolation from her family, and key disclosure to an independent researcher on Elbit’s export licenses.
The hunger strike, one of the the longest and largest in recent British history, continues, with Umer Khalid still refusing food. We must all continue to amplify both the demands of the strike and any actions that are needed to ensure that Umer receives the care he needs and Kamran, Heba and Lewie receive the medical help they need to start their recovery.
Across the UK, ordinary people have refused to be cowed by state repression and have taken daily action in support of the hunger strikers and against Elbit Systems with campaigners achieving another significant victory with Elbit’s insurers, Allianz and Aviva, both announcing they were no longer working with them. Actions have now started against Elbit’s new insurers, Aspen Insurance.
Our government clearly thought its decision to proscribe Palestine Action would end the movement to stop the companies profiting from genocide. They have failed. Both the response to proscription, and the numbers mobilising to amplify the demands of the hunger strikers has shown the strength of our collective movements with hundreds signing up to take direct action.
These brave young people, imprisoned without conviction, some for nearly two years, have used their own health to win significant victories both for their own human rights and in the campaign against Elbit. Their resistance should inspire all of us to continue the fight against the companies complicit in genocide and to refuse to submit to state repression.
This resistance continues.
The hunger strike demands:
- End all censorship. We demand to be able to send and receive communications without restriction, surveillance, or interference from the prison administration. Freedom of expression is a fundamental human right that is vital for prisoners, whose voices are already systematically silenced. Censorship inside prisons is a tool of control used to punish resistance. Letters, phone calls, political statements, books and all other forms of expression must be respected.
- Immediate bail. We demand that we be released from custody while awaiting trial. Holding people on remand, in some cases indefinitely, is a deliberate abuse of power, used to punish prisoners before they have even faced a court or been convicted of any crime. Some of us will have been imprisoned for nearly two years without a conviction. The right to a fair trial must include the right to prepare for it in freedom, not behind bars.
- Right to a fail trial. We demand the right to a fair trial, which cannot happen until all relevant documents related to our cases are released in full. This includes all meetings between British and Israeli state officials, the British police, the attorney general, Elbit Systems representatives, and any others involved in coordinating the ongoing witch-hunt of actionists and campaigners. We also demand the release of government records of all Elbit Systems UK exports from the last five years. We have the right to know what arms are being made and exported from the UK, especially when they are used to commit genocide.
- Deproscribe. We demand the immediate dropping of all terror-related charges and ‘links’, and an end to the use of the Prevent strategy. The government’s use of counter-terror laws to target those engaged in protest and direct action is unjustified and unprecedented, and must be stopped.In light of this, we demand that the British government deproscribe Palestine Action. Direct action is not terrorism. It is a legitimate tactic deployed when democratic channels fail to reflect the will of the people. When the government breaks the law, citizens have the moral responsibility to act in defence of life, human rights, and collective dignity. We also demand an apology from Yvette Cooper for spearheading a smear campaign in a cynical attempt to justify her decision to proscribe Palestine Action. Her claim that Palestine Action was a violent organisation “possibly funded by Iran” has no basis in fact.
- Shut Elbit Down. Many of us are imprisoned for allegedly taking action against Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest weapons manufacturer. Since 2012, Elbit has won 25 public contracts in the UK totalling more than £355m. Now, the Ministry of Defence is preparing to sign a £2.7 billion contract with Elbit that would designate it as a “strategic partner” and see the company train 60,000 British troops each year. We demand that the government does not use taxpayer´s money to fund the machinery of genocide, and scrap this contract. Furthermore, we demand that all Elbit systems’ sites and its subsidiaries in the UK are permanently shut down.
Additional demands:
- Heba to be transfered back to HMP Bronzefield
- End to all non-association orders
- Access to all activities and courses
