Palestine Action prisoner Hoxha ends hunger strike at 58 days

Teuta Hoxha, the Palestine Action prisoner from Croydon, has ended her hunger strike after 58 days.

The decision to pause the hunger strike was taken on Monday, with Hoxha’s physical condition weakened so significantly that, according to supporters, she is in need of hospital treatment. It is alleged that Hoxha had been denied medical treatment by staff at HMP Peterborough.

Hoxha and the other remaining hunger strikers had entered “the lethal zone”, a period where, if someone has gone without food for around 45 days or more, they are at serious risk of dying.

Three prisoners remain on hunger strike.

It is feared that Hoxha or the other hunger strikers may suffer lifelong health ill-effects from their ordeal, including possible neurological damage.

Hoxha, 29, had started to refuse food two months ago, having been held in prison for more than a year without trial and being denied bail. Her MP, Labour junior government minister Sarah Jones, refused to intervene on her constituent’s behalf.

The group Prisoners For Palestine wrote on Instagram on Monday that Hoxha is in serious condition and needs to be taken to hospital.

Hoxha “needs urgent medical care in hospital to prevent refeeding syndrome. The prison is refusing [her] medical treatment, which is required to prevent death in extreme cases of starvation”, Prisoners for Palestine posted.

“Refeeding syndrome” is a potentially fatal condition which occurs when nutrition is restarted in a starving person too quickly.

The Palestine Action members were jailed over alleged involvement in break-ins at the British subsidiary of arms company Elbit Systems near Bristol in 2024.

More than £1million of damage was caused to Elbit’s research centre at Filton.

Elbit Systems is an Israeli defence company, which has been supplying weapons and components used by the Israeli Defence Force in Gaza and the West Bank.

Some members of Palestine Action are also being held for an alleged break-in at a RAF Brize Norton, where two aircraft were sprayed with red paint.

The prisoners deny the charges against them, which include burglary and violent disorder.

Only three of eight Palestine Action hunger strikers continue to refuse food as they demand their release. Those still on hunger strike include Heba Muraisi, 31, and Kamran Ahmed, 28. Lewie Chiaramello, 22, is also refusing food every other day because he’s diabetic.

Hoxha and others were arrested before the government proscribed Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation.

More than 1,600 people have been arrested in connection with support for Palestine Action after near-weekly protests for the ban to be revoked. Mostly, their “crime” has been to hold up a sign that reads “I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action”.

The proscription is being challenged in court.

Last month, an appeal from Croydon trade unionists for action on behalf of Hoxha was ignored by Croydon West MP Jones, who simply passed the buck by referring the matter to her government colleague, the prisons minister, Lord James Timpson. Other constituents who have written to Labour MPs have all received the same stock answer, and no action.

Under English Law there are custody time limits to safeguard unconvicted defendants by preventing them from being held in pre-trial custody for an excessive period of time. The Crown Prosecution Service states that the maximum time a prisoner can spend on remand is 182 days – six months. Hoxha was arrested in November 2024, and the earliest she could stand trial is April – a total of at least 18 months, or three times the legal limit.

In The Guardian newspaper today, columnist George Monbiot outlines how the government is acting in an unlawful and authoritarian manner over the Palestine Action prisoners: “The limbo of remand is often devastating to prisoners’ wellbeing…

“This is one aspect of what campaigners call ‘process as punishment’, an approach that now dominates the treatment of protest groups. Even if you are never convicted of a crime, your life is made hell if you dare, visibly and publicly, to dissent.”

Monbiot writes that the hunger strikers “are being held under ‘terrorist conditions’. This means they are allowed only minimal communications and visits. They’ve also been banned from prison jobs for ‘security reasons’, denied books, newspapers, library and gym visits and subjected to ‘non-association orders’…

“Yet none of the hunger strikers has been charged with, let alone sentenced for, terrorist offences. They have been charged with ordinary criminal offences, such as burglary, criminal damage and violent disorder…

“The government bears moral responsibility for these prisoners. Yet it appears to have no intention of exercising it,” Monbiot writes.

In Croydon, David White, who led a delegation to visit MP Sarah Jones last month only to discover that there was no one at work in her constituency office, told Inside Croydon today, “Teuta Hoxha is to be congratulated for her courage in going almost 60 days without food.

“She and her fellow hunger strikers have drawn attention to legitimate grievances, especially the fact that pro-Palestine protesters, who have not been convicted of any offence, are being imprisoned without trial for periods of well over a year.”

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