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hunger strike
Facing Imminent Death, Final Palestine Action Prisoner Ends Hunger Strike in UK
"If David Lammy wishes to see me dead, if Keir Starmer wishes to see me dead, they can come and do it themselves," said 22-year-old activist Umer Khalid.
Jan 28, 2026
After 17 days without food and three without water, the 22-year-old British pro-Palestine activist Umer Khalid ended his hunger strike after being hospitalized on Monday.
Khalid is the last of the eight young activists with the group Palestine Action to remain on hunger strike to protest their imprisonment without trial and the criminalization of pro-Palestine speech in the UK.
“At the hospital… I was given a choice between treatment and likely death within the next 24 hours due to kidney failure, acute liver failure, and potential cardiac arrest,” said Khalid, in a statement shared by the Prisoners for Palestine group, which is supporting the strikers. He said that he decided to end his hunger strike because, “I am too strong, too loud, too powerful… and there is so much we can do to effect change.”
The activists are being held in prison on remand, meaning they were denied bail and have not yet been given a trial for vandalizing military equipment used to support Israel's genocidal war in Gaza.
Earlier this month, several of the strikers, some of whom had refused food since November, ended their strike after the UK rejected a $2.7 billion contract for a subsidiary of Israel’s largest weapons maker, Elbit Systems.
Four of them were arrested after allegedly breaking into an Elbit facility and destroying equipment. Khalid is among four others accused of trespassing at a British Royal Air Force base and vandalizing airplanes.
Khalid, who suffers from Limb-Girdle Muscular Dystrophy and suffered multiple organ failure during the strike, ended his protest after Amy Frost, the governor of the Wormwood Scrubs prison where he is being held, agreed to meet with him to discuss the conditions of his confinement. After the meeting, he received mail and clothes that the prison had withheld from him, and restrictions on outside visitors that had been in place since July were lifted.
A spokesperson for Prisoners for Palestine said Khalid "absolutely must have compassionate bail in order to heal, all the hunger strikers should."
In addition to protesting the restrictive conditions of their confinement, the strikers were seeking to draw attention to the criminalization of Palestine Action. The UK government, currently led by Labour Party Prime Minister Keir Starmer, added the group to a list of banned "terrorist" organizations in July, meaning that even peaceful support for the group or identification as a member can result in imprisonment.
Since the ban went into effect, more than 2,700 people have been arrested across the UK over support for or involvement with Palestine Action, in many cases for actions like holding a sign or chanting a slogan in support of the group.
The British government has been repeatedly pressed to intervene on behalf of the strikers, who have alleged mistreatment and neglect while in confinement.
Khalid previously went on a 12-day hunger strike, which the Canary reported "made Khalid seriously unwell and unable to walk." According to the outlet, "the prison mismanaged his refeeding by giving him protein shakes and biscuits, dangerously unsuitable."
Other strikers have said recovery from weeks or months without food has been exceedingly difficult. Shahmina Alam, a healthcare worker and the sister of Kamran Ahmed, who refused food for 67 days, said the strike showed that "the prison healthcare system is not fit for purpose" and that "there are systemic failures to provide care which is dignified, timely, or even lifesaving."
"These prisoners are not treated as patients or even humans," she continued. "They are dehumanised, handcuffed in their sleep and in the shower, and are given no privacy, confidentiality, or respect."
Despite calls from medical experts and members of Parliament, David Lammy, the secretary of state for justice, has refused calls to meet with the strikers to discuss their demands, which have included immediate bail, an end to the censorship of their communications, and an end to the ban on Palestine Action.
Khalid said he made his decision to end the strike in part because members of the government "have shown without a doubt that they have no concern for our lives and they do not care if we die in these cells."
He said, "If David Lammy wishes to see me dead, if Keir Starmer wishes to see me dead, they can come and do it themselves."
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Global Intellectuals Voice Solidarity With Palestine Action Hunger Strikers 'At Death's Door'
Angela Davis, Naomi Klein, Sally Rooney, Tariq Ali, and George Monbiot are among the signers of a statement of support for the proscribed anti-genocide protesters, who have refused food for over two months.
Jan 12, 2026
More than 50 international authors and academics signed a declaration published Monday in support of hunger-striking activists allegedly linked to the banned Palestine Action movement, who are at imminent risk of death after refusing to eat for more than two months.
The brief statement—“We oppose genocide, we support the Palestine Action prisoners”—was signed by prominent figures including historian Tariq Ali; novelist Sally Rooney; former Guantánamo Bay prisoner Moazzam Begg; journalists Owen Jones and George Monbiot; and professors Angela Davis, Judith Butler, Naomi Klein, and Ilan Pappé.
The declaration echoes the message on a placard held by Swedish climate campaigner Greta Thunberg when she was arrested last month in London protesting the imprisonment of people accused of being part of Palestine Action after the nonviolent direct action group was officially declared a terrorist organization in July by the UK government.
Since then, more than 2,000 people have been arrested for supporting Palestine Action, often while simply holding signs. Eight accused Palestine Action activists are awaiting trial for allegedly breaking into and damaging a British military base and a facility run by Israeli arms maker Elbit Systems. The defendants are facing at least 18 months behind bars before trial.
On November 2, a small group of imprisoned activists launched a hunger strike. Three people—Heba Muraisi, Kamran Ahmed, and Lewie Chiaramello—are still striking, despite imminent danger of death.
"She’s dying. She said it: ‘I’m dying,'" Francesca Nadin said of her friend Muraisi—who is on the 71st day of her strike—during a Monday interview with the Guardian.
Nadin said that the 31-year-old's body is "shutting down."
"I know mentally she’ll remain strong right to the last moment but she is dying," she added. "The government, by putting her in prison and denying her all her rights, they’re not just letting her die, they’re actively killing her.”
Ahmed, 28, has been refusing food for 64 days. Doctors have informed him that his heart muscles are shrinking and he is at risk of sudden cardiac arrest.
"He’s skinny. I describe him a bit like a piece of paper,” Shahmina Alam, Ahmed's sister, told Al Jazeera last week. "It feels like now every time you see him, it could be the last.”
Chiaramello, 22, has Type 1 diabetes and has been fasting every other day for 44 days.
A fourth person, Umar Khalid, has reportedly resumed his strike following a 13-day pause.
Despite her dire condition, Muraisi is “intent on carrying on until the demands are met," according to friend Amareen Afzal.
The strikers are demanding immediate bail, an end to censorship of their communications, a fair trial, lifting of the ban on Palestine Action, and closure of Elbit Systems' UK facilities.
"The hunger strikers’ demands seem reasonable to me," Monbiot wrote last week. "All these things, I believe, should be happening anyway. And they are of course negotiating positions. Whether all would need to be met for the strike to end cannot be known until the government engages. Its refusal to talk could condemn the strikers to death."
Standing in stark contrast with the US military's torturous force-feeding of hunger striking Guantánamo Bay prisoners during the Obama administration, the UK follows recommendations in the World Medical Association’s Declaration of Malta, which advises doctors not to force-feed prisoners who choose to hunger strike and understand the consequences of their actions.
"Forcible feeding is never ethically acceptable," the declaration states.
In 1981, UK authorities allowed 10 imprisoned Irish Republican Army members, including former Member of Parliament Bobby Sands, to starve themselves to death in Northern Ireland. Their deaths occurred after between 46 and 73 days of refusing food.
A group of former hunger strikers from Palestine, Ireland, and Guantánamo on Sunday issued an urgent appeal to the UK government to save the Palestine Action strikers' lives, and condemning the terrorist designation.
Critics said that the government would be to blame should any of the hunger strikers die.
“The UK is now perilously close to full descent into authoritarian rule," said professor Peter Hallward, who signed the intellectuals' declaration. "Ministers won’t even meet with hunger strikers, who are now at death’s door."
Hallward added that British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy, Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper, and Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood "seem perfectly ready to let this country’s most committed and courageous opponents of an ongoing genocide waste away and die."
Israel's US-backed war and siege on Gaza following the Hamas-led attack of October 7, 2023 has left more than 250,000 Palestinians dead, wounded, or missing in Gaza and most of the coastal strip in ruins. Around 2 million Gazans have been forcibly displaced, starved, or sickened.
Hundreds of Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces since the current cease-fire took effect three months ago. Israeli authorities are still blocking or strictly limiting the entry of critical supplies into Gaza, where 2-month-old infant Mohammed Abu Harbid over the weekend became at least the fourth Palestinian baby to freeze to death since November.
More than a dozen Palestinians—including at least five children—have been killed by Israeli attacks in Gaza in recent days.
Israel is facing a genocide case filed by South Africa at the International Court of Justice, the principal judicial body of the United Nations, where a panel of experts found last year that Israel was committing genocide. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant are also wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.
On Monday, a court in Edinburgh held a hearing on a petition filed by human rights campaigner and former diplomat Craig Murray seeking to lift the ban on Palestine Action in Scotland, whose judiciary is independent from the rest of the UK.
“The impact of proscription of Palestine Action has been appalling," attorney Joanna Cherry told the court. "Scores of peaceful people of entirely good character have been arrested under the absurd pretence of terrorism.”
“We are dealing with human rights and liberties—some of the most fundamental in our society," Cherry added. "If people don’t have the right to express their views and assemble to express their views, they can’t really take part in civil society properly and adequately. It’s hard to imagine a more urgent situation.”
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UK Medical Professionals Warn Palestine Action Hunger Strikers 'Will Die in Prison'
“I hope it doesn’t have to come to that because these demands are very, very simple,” said a friend to one of the activists. “They are asking the British government to uphold international and national law.”
Dec 19, 2025
Eight Palestine Action activists in the UK are at risk of dying in prison as they remain on hunger strike to protest their detention, according to hundreds of medical professionals.
More than 800 doctors, nurses, and therapists wrote to Justice Secretary David Lammy on Thursday to warn that the detainees, who are all between the ages of 20 and 31, were not receiving adequate medical care. The activists are being held in five prisons on remand, meaning that they are kept in prison before trial without being released on bail.
"Without resolution, there is the real and increasingly likely potential that young British citizens will die in prison, having never even been convicted of an offense,” the campaigners said.
At least five of the hunger strikers have reportedly been hospitalized after refusing food for weeks. Two of the strikers, Amu Gib and Qesser Zuhrah, have refused food for 48 days, while another, Heba Muraisi, has refused for 47.
Ella Moulsdale, a fellow activist and friend of Zurah's, told ITV: "It's very hard to watch her walk right now. She has almost no energy to, so she walks extremely slowly, with her back hunched in pain. She still wants me to hug her, but she can't hug back at all."
"Any day after day 35 is considered final and severe, when your body essentially starts to eat itself," Moulsdale said. "Her body is clearly working overtime, and it doesn't have enough fuel to keep her alive."
The eight hunger strikers are among 33 people arrested in connection with two direct actions against entities they argue are taking part in Israel’s human rights violations in Palestine.
Four were arrested for alleged involvement in a 2024 break-in at a facility in Filton for Elbit Systems, Israel's largest arms manufacturer and the primary supplier of weapons and surveillance technology used in the genocide in Gaza and Israel's occupation of the West Bank.
After breaking into the facility, activists are accused of having dismantled military equipment, including quadcopter drones, which have been used to kill and maim Palestinians in Gaza, sometimes reportedly playing the sounds of crying women and babies to lure them out of hiding. The activists also allegedly destroyed other weapons systems, computers, and manufacturing equipment, totaling over £1 million. In September, Elbit quietly closed down the site.
Four others are accused of trespassing at a British Royal Air Force base in Norton, where they reportedly sprayed red paint on the engines of two aircraft. According to one report, since December 2023, the RAF has conducted over 1,000 hours worth of surveillance over Gaza, communicating intelligence to the Israeli military.
The Labour Party government, led by Prime Minister Keir Starmer, added Palestine Action to a list of banned "terrorist" organizations in July, which made membership in or support for the group a criminal offense.
According to Amnesty International, more than 600 people were arrested for peacefully supporting the group between November 18 and 29. In October, over 500 protesters were arrested on a single day, mostly for holding signs calling on British authorities to lift the ban.
Since the ban went into effect, more than 2,700 people have been arrested across the UK over support for or involvement with Palestine Action. The UK has seen a more than 660% increase in "terrorism" related arrests since September as a result of the ban.
Dr. James Smith, an emergency physician and lecturer at University College London, told ITV that the activists on hunger strike need specialist medical care that they are not receiving.
According to Smith, 200 members of the British Medical Association wrote a letter to the organization's leadership "to sound the alarm" about "substandard monitoring and treatment" for the prisoners.
"The hunger strikers are at imminent risk of irreversible damage to their bodies, and of death," Smith said. “It is my view, as [a National Health Service] doctor, that the complexity of the hunger strikers’ care needs must now be managed with regular specialist input if not continuous monitoring in hospital.”
"Put simply, the hunger strikers are dying,” he added at a press conference Thursday. “They are all now at a critical stage.”
Earlier this week, a group of 51 members of parliament and peers wrote a separate letter urging Lammy to meet with lawyers for the eight prisoners. UK Prison Minister Lord James Timpson dismissed the request, saying he would not meet with any of the prisoners or their attorneys: "I don't treat any prisoners any differently from any other," he said.
On Wednesday, former Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, who is now an independent MP, wrote Lammy another letter asking if he shared the minister's satisfaction, and reiterating that the eight prisoners are "at serious risk of death" amid "regular breaches of prison conditions and prison rules."
"The Ministry of Justice is still refusing to meet with the lawyers or families of hunger strikers being held on remand," Corbyn said in a post on social media. "This is a shambolic dereliction of duty. I have written to David Lammy, again, imploring him to do the right thing before it is too late."
Starmer responded to Corbyn's criticisms himself in Parliament that same day: “He will appreciate there are rules and procedures in place in relation to hunger strikes, and we’re following those rules and procedures."
The hunger strikers have demanded immediate bail and the right to a fair trial. They have also called for an end to the censorship of their communications, a lift on the ban against Palestine Action, and the closing of all UK sites run by Elbit.
Asked if her friend Zurah would continue to refuse food even as she reaches deadly stages, Moulsdale said, "That's ultimately her decision to make."
"I hope it doesn't have to come to that because these demands are very, very simple," she said. "They are asking the British government to uphold international and national law."
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