Teuta Hoxha, the Palestine Action prisoner from Croydon, has ended her hunger strike after 58 days.
‘Process as punishment’: Teuta Hoxha
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.
Special restrictions: Tueta Hoxha, detained in Peterborough, has gone more than a year in prison without trial
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.
Defiant protest: Croydon pensioner David White has been arrested twice for holding up a sign
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.”
Read more: Croydon TUC calls on MP to support Palestine hunger striker
Read more: MP Jones putting her Croydon constituents on remote control
Read more: ‘It was Jeremy Corbyn who won the election for me’ says Jones
Read more: Our four MPs are doing nothing to try to stop carnage in Gaza
PAID ADS: To advertise your services or products to our 10,000 weekday visitors to the site, as featured on Google News Showcase, email us inside.croydon@btinternet.com for our unbeatable ad rates
- If you have a news story about life in or around Croydon, or want to publicise your residents’ association or business, or if you have a local event to promote, please email us with full details at inside.croydon@btinternet.com
As featured on Google News Showcase
- Our comments section on every report provides all readers with an immediate “right of reply” on all our content. Our comments policy can be read by clicking here
Inside Croydon is a member of the Independent Community News Network
I hope the government and God will hear her prayers. So much destruction in Palestine, so much suffering for the people—it’s pure genocide on Israel’s part. How can this be?
Such a brave woman and I am glad she is not making the ultimate sacrifice, however, sadly, she may never fully recover from her brave stand against this despicable, immoral government. I wrote to my MP, Natasha Irons, imploring her to sign the EDM tabled by John McDonnell but she ignored me and as as far as I know, has not signed the EDM supporting the hunger strikers, she is a disgrace!
Another good reason to not vote Labour, a party whose leader is a lawyer who shows contempt for truth and justice, at home and abroad
So sad, I sincerely hope she will be ok. This mistreatment is so wrong and so shocking.
Maybe David White should have had the sense to phone ahead to arrange a mutually convenient meeting.
You must have missed the bit in our earlier report which explained how Jones collects £200,000 per year of public money to run a constituency office for the benefit of her constituents, where the phones are staffed just four hours per week, and which shut up shop two weeks before Christmas, and would be closed until January 5?
Noted. But I would still have phoned ahead. Why waste time and money on abortive visits?
How about “to try to help save a woman’s life”?
But his visit achieved nothing as nobody was there!!!!!!!
1, It was not the delegation’s fault that the MP is not staffing her office, despite the £200,000 per year of tax money she receives to do so.
2, Nor is it their fault that the office phones are only staffed 4/40 hours per week.
3, And the delegation can be commended for at least trying to do something about a grave situation over the health and well-being of a young woman. Wheras you, it appears, did nothing.
In a previous job I managed a number of immigration detainees on hunger strike against deportation from the UK. By day six or seven they would invariably be transferred to a hospital, later released on a tag. This will now be on the minister’s desk and a political decision not a medical one.
Whether we agree with their opposition to our government’s support for a genocide or not, just like any one of us they have a right to be presumed innocent until proven otherwise. They aren’t charged with any terrorist offence. Juries regularly acquit their actions because the prosecution is morally wrong.
This is politically motivated cruelty. Our political representatives are immoral cowards. Comforted by their 94 grand salary, £200k office expenses and free Taylor Swift tickets their moral red lines go out the window.
Being honest we’re also to blame by voting for the same old shit they offer then being surprised when they screw us over again. If they don’t cancel our elections in May then I hope people send a big message to the government that we can be, and are, better than this.
Anyway, Happy New Year.
2-Tier is running scared of Reform. But he can’t keep cancelling elections indefinitely. Hope you’re not thinking of voting for the Green guy who believes he can persuade Putin fo to renounce war.