Why I am on hunger strike in solidarity with Pal Action detainees

I cognize this road. I person its representation etched into my bones. I transportation scars that won’t heal without justice, without accountability.

I learned it successful Guantanamo, erstwhile the lone happening I could power was my ain body.

We were disappeared. Isolated. Forced into silence. Our words were redacted. Our letters were stamped secret. Lawyers were blocked. Time stretched and rotted. No tribunal dates were given. No existent charges were made.

I was reduced to a fig successful an orangish uniform, locked successful a metallic cage. The US authorities had already named me. “The worst of the worst.” “Terrorist.” “Enemy combatant.” Labels designed to marque torture dependable necessary.

And torture came. Day and night. Relentless. Mechanical. Meant to interruption the caput first, past the body. So I stopped eating. Not arsenic a gesture. Not arsenic a plea. I stopped due to the fact that everything other had been taken from me. My assemblage was the lone territory this overseas authorities hadn’t yet occupied.

A hunger onslaught is not symbolic. It is not dramatic. That’s a prevarication sold by the media, by radical who person ne'er watched a assemblage illness from the inside, who crook dilatory decease into headlines and panels and cleanable sentences.

A hunger onslaught is simply a slow, achy travel towards death. It dismantles you portion by piece. Muscles shrink. Vision fades. The bosom falters. Organs statesman to fail. Every bushed is simply a warning. Every hr drags you person to death, whether you privation it oregon not.

A hunger onslaught begins erstwhile each different doorway is slammed shut. When the strategy makes it wide your beingness has nary value, arsenic agelong arsenic you enactment quiescent and obedient. When it looks consecutive astatine you and tells you you’re already dead.

So you reply with your body.

At slightest eight imprisoned pro-Palestine activists successful the UK person refused food. One has been connected hunger onslaught for much than 2 months. Others person passed 50 days without eating. Some person already been taken to hospital. They are scattered crossed prisons, chopped disconnected from each other, torn from their families, buried nether the connection “terrorist” truthful cruelty tin beryllium dressed up arsenic law.

They are Heba Muraisi, Qesser Zurah, Amu Gib, Teuta Hoxha, Kamran Ahmed, Lewie Chiaramello, Jon Cink, and Umer Khalid.

Photos of the 8 Pal Action hunger strikers are displayed during an lawsuit successful Rome, Italy connected December 13, 2025 [Courtesy of Mansoor Adayfi]

United Nations quality rights experts person expressed sedate interest for hunger strikers’ lives. They warned the activists look heightened risks of organ failure, neurological damage, and decease without due aesculapian attraction and called connected the UK authorities to guarantee timely exigency care, to prosecute with the activists’ demands and to code rights issues linked to prolonged pretrial detention and restrictions connected protestation activity.

I person been wrong this communicative before. Violent words are meant to portion you of your humanity truthful the nationalist doesn’t person to consciousness the sting of your suffering.

When Jeremy Corbyn raised the hunger onslaught successful Parliament, immoderate MPs laughed. Laughed. Not whispers. Not quiescent discomfort. But unfastened mockery. Smirks from padded seats portion people’s bodies were breaking down successful cells. While radical were collapsing, being dragged to infirmary wards, organs failing. This is untouchable power.

David Lammy, the lawman premier minister, has dodged gathering the families of the hunger strikers. He has avoided adjacent the barest quality motion of listening. Cowardice wrapped successful protocol. This is deliberate contempt.

In 1981, during the Irish hunger strike, men were dying successful situation cells portion politicians dismissed them arsenic criminals, attention-seekers, terrorists. The mockery came first. The jokes. The coldness. The refusal to engage. Then came the funerals. Power ever laughs earlier it kills. Humour becomes a shield for cowardice.

Nothing has changed. The accents are different. The suits are amended tailored. The cruelty is the same.

This is not democracy. This is rot astatine the centre of the state.

We were held for years successful Guantanamo without charges, without evidence, without a way to release. In the UK today, radical are kept connected extended remand, sometimes for years, portion proceedings dates are pushed further away. Time itself becomes the punishment. Time becomes a weapon. A limb against prisoners and their families.

Isolation comes next.

In Guantanamo, isolation was designed to interruption us. Months, sometimes years, without meaningful quality contact. Silence truthful dense it pressed against your skull. A soundlessness meant to erase you. In UK prisons, hunger strikers are separated. Transferred. Harassed. Stripped of routine, stripped of connection. Isolation is framed arsenic safety. It is not. It is punishment. It is control.

Then comes censorship. Letters delayed. Phone calls chopped short. Visits restricted. Information filtered. Families near successful the dark. Lawyers forced to combat for the barest access. At Guantanamo, each connection leaving the campy was monitored. In the UK, the aforesaid instinct survives. Control the narrative. Control the person.

Then comes aesculapian coercion. In Guantanamo, hunger onslaught was met with force. Shackles. Restraint chairs. Tubes forced done noses into stomachs portion guards pinned our limbs. They called it aesculapian care. It was violence. Pure, deliberate, crushing unit designed to marque absorption unbearable.

The UK likes to unreal Guantanamo was an American mistake. Something distant. Something finished. It was not. It was a laboratory. The experiments were exported. Absorbed. Normalised. And now, they are applied wrong their prisons.

You spot it successful the extended remand.

You spot it successful the proscription laws twisted to criminalise protest.

You spot it successful prisons utilized arsenic warehouses, places to store radical indefinitely portion the authorities takes its clip gathering a case.

And you spot it successful the quiescent practice betwixt systems. Guantanamo fed the achromatic sites. Black sites fed home counterterror policing. The aforesaid logic shows up again and again. In places similar Alligator Alcatraz successful Florida. In British prisons holding governmental activists nether coercion laws. Different flags. Same playbook.

Abuse travels faster than accountability.

I person watched governments survey each other. Share techniques. Refine the language. Learn however to cage radical legally. How to agelong the instrumentality without snapping it. How to crush dissent portion calling it order.

This is not astir agreeing with the authorities of the prisoners. This is astir whether a authorities is allowed to vanish radical earlier trial, isolate them, censor them, past punish them for refusing to cooperate with their ain erasure. If the UK wants to assertion it is thing similar Guantanamo, past it has to beryllium it with action.

End prolonged remand without trial.

End isolation arsenic a effect to protest.

Restore afloat entree to lawyers and families.

Provide aesculapian attraction that protects life, not policies that softly endanger it.

Listen to the hunger strikers. Meet their families look to face.

Abolish the panic laws utilized to criminalise dissent, agelong guilt by association, and vanish radical down connection alternatively of evidence.

Force members of parliament to measurement retired of soundlessness and instrumentality responsibility.

These are not extremist demands. They are the bare minimum. The floor, not the ceiling, for immoderate nine that claims to respect quality rights.

I americium not penning this arsenic an observer. I americium penning arsenic idiosyncratic who has already lived the ending. I americium telling you plainly, without euphemism and without distance. Systems similar this bash not close themselves. They bash not dilatory down retired of shame. They lone halt erstwhile they are confronted, straight and without fear. Now.

I garbage to beryllium silent. I americium joining this hunger onslaught successful solidarity. I bash this due to the fact that I recognise the strategy astatine work. I bash this due to the fact that I cognize Guantanamo did not end, it spread. It embedded itself successful different prisons, different laws, different governments that archer themselves they are better. I bash this due to the fact that lasting with the oppressed against the oppressor is not symbolic for me. It is simply a work earned done survival. I bash this due to the fact that I americium capable to, and due to the fact that doing thing would marque maine complicit.

This hunger onslaught is not astir food. It is astir dignity. It is astir justice. It is astir remand utilized arsenic punishment, soundlessness utilized arsenic policy, and a authorities that believes if it waits agelong enough, radical volition interruption and disappear. It believes soundlessness volition support it, shield it, absolve it. It volition not.

I basal with the hunger strikers. I volition not look away. I volition not soften this. I volition not beryllium polite astir dilatory decease carried retired successful cleanable buildings and ineligible language.

And I volition not fto them beryllium erased. Free the hungers strikers!

The views expressed successful this nonfiction are the author’s ain and bash not needfully bespeak Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.