THE Community Camp 4 Palestine, opposite the US Embassy in south London, hosted a meeting to support the hunger strikers from Filton 24 on Saturday evening.
Speakers were Greta Thunberg, filmmaker, Saeed Farouky, Francesca Nadin from prisoners4palestine, Pat Reynolds of the Irish in London and Dr Asim Qureshi from Cage International.
Introducing the meeting, Tim Flynn from the camp said: ‘The hunger strikers should be out on bail, I’m on bail for doing more than they did, I was accused of doing £175,000 of damage and I’m on bail!’
Francesca Nadin, from prisoners4palestine speaking first, said: ‘There are so many things happening in the last few weeks it seems like years!
‘When you’re toe-to-toe with the enemy and you see what they can do to you, the psychological torture that we have to constantly fight against, it’s a visceral thing.
‘They are feeling it in prison. I’ve been there myself, I know what it’s like.
‘We have to do whatever it takes for the hunger strikers.
‘We have to grit our teeth. We had a delegation of ex prisoners and hunger strikers come over from Derry and they said the same thing to us.
‘We have to put our own personal feeling aside for certain things for them and make it so they can win, I know we can do that.
‘We’ve already had some victories, I’ve never seen so many liberals smashing things up!
‘I’ve never seen so many people so moved in such a short period of time, radicalised by the situation.
‘We’ve seen 500 people signing up for direct action in the last week, that’s about the same number as in the last five years.’
Next spoke filmmaker Saeed Farouky who said: ‘If you listen to the stories of the Palestinian prisoners it fills your heart and you become a part of the Palestinian resistance.
‘The genocide is globalised because here in the UK the Elbit factories are an integral part of the genocide, that means the resistance has to be globalised and the Palestinians recognise this.
‘The Palestinians are trying to survive a genocide and understand that every one of you are with them shoulder-to-shoulder, every one of you plays a role in the resistance.
‘In July, the Palestinian Prisoners Association wrote a letter in solidarity with Palestinian prisoners here, the political prisoners in British jails, and they made three points; one, to show solidarity as part of the resistance; two, to condemn the British government for their treatment of prisoners; and the third to condemn Elbit Systems for their direct role in the architecture of this genocide.
‘Then in November this year, the hunger strikes started, the Palestinian Prisoners Association wrote two beautiful statements I will read out. The first is from a displaced Palestinian prisoner in exile, he refers to what they call “the battle of the empty stomachs,” to refer to hunger strikes, which have a long noble tradition in the Palestinian resistance.
‘ “We too are scorched by the fires of war which in the hands of the oppressor, just as our children are burned by the fire of its weapons with Britain’s support for the killing machine in Gaza just as in the past it killed thousands of our grandparents, including the hundred executed by the Mandate authority as part of its fulfilment of the accursed Balfour Declaration, whose bitter anniversary coincides with the launch of the hunger strikes.”
‘So we are here today not only to give each other strength but to give those prisoners strength, to remind them they are not alone.’
Pat Reynolds, from the IrishinLondon4Palestine, said: ‘I will speak about the 1981 hunger strike when Bobby Sands and nine comrades died under the rule of Thatcher.
‘To understand that, you have to go back to 1918 when 75 per cent of the Irish people voted for an independent republic, the British government refused to give that, and partitioned Ireland which was a crime against the Irish people and it forced through civil wars.
‘Hunger striker Terence MacSwiney, who died on hunger strike in 1920, and who was an anti-imperialist and a revolutionary, said “it’s not those who inflict the most but those who can endure the most that will prevail.”
‘Hunger striker Bobby Sands was both a poet and a writer and when he died after the hunger strike in 1981 there over 120,000 people marched after his coffin. Thatcher called him a criminal and a terrorist but that is what they always call freedom fighters.
‘Things are moving from a nationalist agenda to an anti-imperialist agenda.
‘Lammy, the Justice Minister is persecuting the young people and he should be in The Hague.
‘We need a different kind of society, we need to stand with these hunger strikers, they are freedom fighters.’
Asim Qureshi of Cage International said: ‘I saw an announcement yesterday that the UAE government has just signed a $2 billion agreement with Elbit Systems, this is extremely worrying that this is ostensibly a Muslim majority state using its resources to maintain the machinery of violence around the world.
‘Yesterday Tommy Robinson was in the UAE, invited there by the Emirates to discuss terrorist organisations operating in the UK.
‘Why? Because for many years the Emirates sees UK Muslims as an unruly bunch! – because they don’t like authoritarianism, fascism or racism or Zionism.
‘You might think terrorism laws are used to prosecute those involved in political violence.
‘When there is an actual act of violence in the UK, terrorism laws are never used – what is used? – the the Violent Explosives Act and the Violence Against Persons Act.
‘Terrorism legislation is used in the pre-criminal space, it is used for what – to take your phones off you, to stop you at borders, to ban literature, to ban protests, to ban slogans, this is what the infrastructure of counter-terrorism is set to do.
So counter-terrorism has no bearing on stopping political violence; It is about reinforcing the arm of the state, so we can get a grip on what is happening to us and why we need to fight it.
‘We need to double down on our protests. The police, the courts, the CPS are struggling to contain them. That is why they they are introducing new legislation to try and reduce the numbers out.
‘So if they now say it’s an offence to say “globalise the Intifada” fine, let them do that, but we will find a million ways around it, and we will make them look silly at every turn.
‘I am speaking to hunger strikers every day on the phone and they are so animated and get so much nourishment from what’s going on outside. The reason they are able to go on so long is because they see everything you are doing.
‘The first time I spoke with Qesser Zuhar, the first thing she said was “what’s going on on the outside?”
‘We have to keep fighting and cannot let them take ground from us.’
Greta Thunberg said: ‘The entire world is watching and we are witnessing with pure and utter disgust how the UK government is handling this situation.
‘Ending complicity means ending arms transfers, it means cutting ties and raising our voices as loud as we can.
‘So when we act upon and try to defend international law and the very basic human rights, the people in power are finding ways to fabricate absurd arguments to criminalise that.
‘But there are many who are stepping up and willing to end the complicity, not the least like these hunger strikers have been, they are true freedom fighters and I am very proud to be in the same movement fighting for the same cause as them over the entire world and this is happening in a world where the people in power for some reason have decided that only expressing opposition to genocide and to say I support action for Palestine is considered be terrorism and treated as terrorism – but bombing a hospital is not terrorism.’
