Profiteers from genocide

Hunger strike exposes lack of due process in Britain

- by SERENA WYLDE

EIGHT British activists on remand in UK jails went on hunger strike at the beginning of November after the Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood failed to respond to a letter laying out the abuses they were the subject of.

UN human rights experts stated that the hunger strike reflected a ‘measure of last resort’ taken by people who believe ‘their right to protest and effect remedy has been exhausted’.

Some of the hunger strikers have been on remand without trial for 18 months.

They were arrested by counter-terrorist police, some at gunpoint, before Palestine Action was proscribed as a ‘terrorist organisation’.

None of the eight hunger strikers has been convicted of any crime, or accused of any crime of violence against people.

According to documentary-maker and journalist Richard Sanders, half of them are accused of taking part in the operation to deface Elbit Systems R&D centre in Bristol, part of Israel’s largest arms manufacturer, and the other half were involved in the operation to spray red paint on RAF planes at RAF Brize Norton.