As Hunger Striker Abu Hawwash Wins His Battle for Freedom: From Kurdistan to Palestine to Great Britain, Hunger Strikes Still Matter

 

Palestinian prisoner Hisham Abu Hawwash, who has been on an open-ended hunger strike for 141 consecutive days, has suspended his strike after an agreement was reached on his release from Israeli captivity, according to official Palestinian sources.
The Palestinian Authority (PA)'s Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs said in a statement that Abu Hawwash, who had been on his 141st day of hunger strike in protest against his detention without charge, ended the strike on Tuesday following an agreement under which he would be freed on February 26.
"The agreement stipulates the release of Abu Hawwash on February 26 without any extension, as well as the termination of his treatment in Israeli hospitals until his release," the statement underlined.
The Palestinian Prisoners Society (PPS)'s attorney, Jawad Boulos, also confirmed that an agreement had been reached and the 40-year-old Palestinian inmate had terminated his open-ended hunger strike after 141 days in a row.
Palestinians have protested across the occupied West Bank and Gaza in support of Abu Hawwash and the Islamic Jihad resistance movement had threatened to target Tel Aviv if he died in Israeli jails.
Most recently, the 40 year-old political prisoner has recently suffered with a decreased level of consciousness, severe weakness, and a potentially fatal potassium deficiency.
Abdul-Latif Qanu, the spokesman for the Palestinian resistance movement of Hamas, praised the prospective release of the hunger-striking inmate and said, "A new victory is recorded by the prisoner Hisham Abu Hawwash, to confirm once again the ability of our Palestinian people and their valiant captives to win every battle they are waging with the occupation."
He added, "Abu Hawwash's victory over the Zionist regime is an extension of the steadfastness of our Palestinian people in the face of the Zionist occupation."
The rights advocacy group Palestinian Prisoners Club hailed Abu Hawwash’s resistance as a "victory" and said celebrations were held in the southern West Bank city of al-Khalil (Hebron) and his birth place after the announcement.
"The battle of Abu Hawwash brought the issue of the captive movement, specifically the issue of administrative detentions, to the fore, despite all the challenges that he and his comrades who preceded him on strike recently faced," Prisoners Club said in a statement, referring to an Israeli policy of detention without charge.
"Abu Hawwash's victory comes as a complement to previous victories achieved by others in the face of the arbitrary policy of administrative detention."
The Palestinian Commission of Detainees' and Ex-Detainees' Affairs warned earlier in the day that 50 Palestinian prisoners were set to begin an open hunger strike on Tuesday night in solidarity with Abu Hawwash. The commission added that the prisoners of the Islamic Jihad resistance movement in Israeli jails would be leading the strike.
Palestinian resistance groups had over the past weeks warned against the deteriorating condition of Abu Hawwash's health and pressured the Tel Aviv regime to release the Palestinian hunger-striking inmate.
Abu Hawwash, a father of five children, who had been held since October 2020 but, under the draconian administrative detention order, had not been charged and had not gone on trial.

Under Israel’s administrative detention orders, which are mainly used against Palestinians, prisoners can be held indefinitely without knowing what they are accused of, with evidence even withheld from their lawyers.and held in an Israeli jail without charge.
More than 7,000 Palestinians are reportedly held in Israeli jails. Over 540 of these inmates have apparently been held without charge, with some of them staying in jail for up to 11 years according to human rights groups. .
Israeli jail authorities keep Palestinian prisoners under deplorable conditions lacking proper hygienic standards. The inmates have also been subjected to systematic torture, harassment, and repression.
Palestinian detainees have continuously resorted to open-ended hunger strikes in an attempt to express their outrage at the practice.

Ever since Israel occupied the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza in 1967, Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails have resorted to hunger strikes as a form of protest to win collective or individual rights.Since then, there have been many more mass and group hunger strikes. Prisoners have demanded improved conditions, to be allowed family visits, or an end to solitary confinement.

Hunger strikes are a form of resistance that has long been understood as a weapon of last resort by the powerless and disenfranchised. designed to provoke feelings of guilt in others, especially those in positions of authority. Most hunger strikers involve either a time-limited symbolic refusal of food, or – in more extreme cases – a prolonged fast, limiting themselves to a liquid diet.

Over the first three days without food, the body uses up its store of glucose for energy. Then, the liver starts processing body fat, and the body enters “ketosis”, producing ketones to use as fuel.

Once the fat store is exhausted, the body enters “starvation mode” and starts harvesting muscles and vital organs for energy. At this stage, the loss of bone marrow becomes life-threatening. Hunger strikers can last anything from 46 to 73 days before dying.Indeed, death has been the outcome of many hunger strikes as in the case of the 1981 Irish Republican prisoners’ strike.

Humans can generally live for up to seven days without food or water, depending on their health. If only liquids are taken, a human can survive for up to 30 to 45 days. To last longer than that, hunger strikers must keep their physical activity down to a minimum,

Hunger Strikes in British society is always a subject of much controversy many people see the act as a fanatical approach to resolving political objectives, while many people hold the importance of life to such an extent that they see the act hunger strike as nothing more than a suicidal approach to resistance. Many also see hunger strikes as a strange phenomenon that shares no link to our own society or history of our people. But this could not be further from the truth.

To understand this we need to look back at our own history. Since the days of the British Empire to the political turbulence of the Thatcher years, Hunger strikes have played a major role in our history. Hunger strikes have helped shift the political discourse of our society. This is impossible to deny. Looking back at our history, many major movements from women’s suffrage to the liberation of India and Ireland from British Colonialism. In each of these struggles there were hunger strikes.

In medieval Ireland, people would fast on the doorstep of those they believed had wronged them; if they died, the accused inherited their debts. Ancient India had a similar practice.

The first famous hunger striker in modern times was British suffragette Marion Wallace Dunlop, who began refusing food in prison in 1909 to fight for women’s right to vote.On 5th July, 1909 she petitioned the governor of Holloway Prison: “I claim the right recognized by all civilized nations that a person imprisoned for a political offence should have first-division treatment; and as a matter of principle, not only for my own sake but for the sake of others who may come after me, I am now refusing all food until this matter is settled to my satisfaction.” 

Wallace-Dunlop refused to eat for several days. When the doctor asked her what she was going to eat, she replied: "My determination". He answered: "Indigestible stuff, but tough no doubt."Herbert Gladstone , the Home Secretary, was consulted and he told the governor of the prison that "she should be allowed to die." 

However, on reflection, they thought that if this happened, Dunlop might become a martyr and after ninety-one hours she was suddenly set free. According to Joseph Lennon: "She came to her prison cell as a militant suffragette, but also as a talented artist intent on challenging contemporary images of women. After she had fasted for ninety-one hours in London’s Holloway Prison, the Home Office ordered her unconditional release on July 8, 1909, as her health, already weak, began to fail". . Gandhi, a lawyer in London at the time, was among the crowd that heard the speech she delivered after being released.

On 22nd September 1909,Chotte Marsh, Laura Ainsworth and Mary Leigh were arrested while disrupting a public meeting being held by Herbert Asquith  Marsh, Ainsworth and Leigh were all sentenced to two weeks' imprisonment. They immediately decided to go on hunger strike a strategy developed by Marion Wallace-Dunlop a few weeks earlier. but the governor of Winson Green Prison, was willing to feed the three women by force. 

Keir Hardie, the Labour MP, protested against the idea of force-feeding in the House of Commons. However, his comments were greeted with a chorus of laughter and jeers. One newspaper reported: "Most of us desire something or other which we have not got... but we do not therefore take hatchets and wreck people's houses, or even shriek hysterically because the whole course of government and society is not altered to give us what we seek. These notoriety-hunters have effectually discredited the movement they think to promote."

Hardie wrote to The Daily News to complain about the way these women were being treated: "Mr. Masterman, speaking on behalf of the Home Secretary, admitted that some of the nine prisoners now in Winston Green Gaol, Birmingham, had been subjected to 'hospital treatment', and admitted that this euphemism meant administering food by force. The process employed was the insertion of a tube down the throat into the stomach and pumping the food down. To do this, I am advised, a gag has to be used to keep the mouth open. That there is difference of opinion concerning the horrible brutality of this proceeding? Women worn and weak by hunger, are seized upon, held down by brute force, gagged, a tube inserted down the throat, and food poured or pumped into the stomach. Let British men think over the spectacle".

C,P,Scott wrote to Asquith and Gladstone complaining of the "substantial injustice of punishing a girl like Miss Marsh with two months hard labour plus forcible feeding." As the editor of the Manchester Guardian, a newspaper that supported the Liberal Party, he suggested that the women should be released "to prevent the damage which is being done to our party". As a result of this letter, Gladstone agreed to monitor the health of the prisoners with a view to recommending an early release. 

Mary Leigh, described what it was like to be force-fed: "On Saturday afternoon the wardress forced me onto the bed and two doctors came in. While I was held down a nasal tube was inserted. It is two yards long, with a funnel at the end; there is a glass junction in the middle to see if the liquid is passing. The end is put up the right and left nostril on alternative days. The sensation is most painful - the drums of the ears seem to be bursting and there is a horrible pain in the throat and the breast. The tube is pushed down 20 inches. I am on the bed pinned down by wardresses, one doctor holds the funnel end, and the other doctor forces the other end up the nostrils. The one holding the funnel end pours the liquid down - about a pint of milk... egg and milk is sometimes used." Leigh's graphic account of the horrors of forcible feeding was published while she was still in prison. Afraid that she might die and become a martyr, it was decided to release her. 

Charlotte Marsh also experienced force-feeding. According to Elizabeth Crawford the author of The Women's Suffrage Movement: A Reference Guide 1866-1928 (2000): "The Prison Visiting Committee reported that at first she (Charlotte Marsh) had to be fed by placing food in the mouth and holding the nostrils, but that she later took food from a feeding cup."Votes for Women  on her release, reported that Marsh had been fed by a feeding tube 139 times.  The authorities believed that force-feeding would act as a deterrent as well as a punishment. This was a serious miscalculation and in many ways it had the opposite effect. Militant members of the WSPU now had beliefs as strong as any religion and now they could argue that women were actually being tortured for their faith. "Suffragettes submitted to force-feeding as a way to express solidarity with their friends as well as to further the cause."

The suffragette Sylvia Pankhurst wrote of the “sickening sensation” of force-feeding, though she noted that the “sense of degradation” was even worse than the pain.

 

 

 A drawing from the WSPU newspaper, The Suffragette in 1909

 

The use of hunger strike as a form of resistance in 20th century Ireland began with James Connolly and Hanna Sheehy Skeffington. They were imprisoned in Mountjoy Jail during the Great Lock-out of 1913 and were released within days of commencing their fast. The tactic was then borrowed by Irish republican prisoners,ten thousand of whom went on hunger strike in British prisons between 1916 and 1923. The brilliant and harrowing film, Hunger, by Steve McQueen, portrays the most famous republican hunger strike in the Maze prison, Belfast, when Bobby Sands starved to death in 1981 with nine other prisoners. 

 

 

With the ongoing war between the Provisional IRA and the British State over the struggle for Irish Reunification, Many Irish republican militants were arrested and interred at the Maze prison by the authorities. Whilst in prison the Irish republican prisoners began a series of protests over a five-year period. The protests began as the blanket protest in 1976, when the British government withdrew Special Category Status for convicted paramilitary prisoners. This led to two separate hunger strikes organized by prisoners of whom were members of the Provisional IRA and Irish National Liberation Army (INLA). The first hunger strike took place In 1980, when seven prisoners participated in the action, however the strike ended when the British government decided to make an offer in order for the prisoners to concede their demands. This however was not to last when the Government then did a u-turn on the details of the agreement. The decision of the government led to a second hunger strike, which began in 1981 and was led by Bobby Sands. 

This hunger strike led to increased support for the Irish Republican cause in Ireland, North and South and around the world  One month before his death Bobby Sands was elected to Parliament in a rebuke to the British Government from the people of Northern Ireland having won 30,492 votes, ten thousand more than Thatcher in her London Constituency of Finchley and with a majority twice as large. I remember  Thatcher's ( British PM at the time)  callous refusal to reach any compromise - " crime is crime, it is not political." she said,  which only served to reinvigorate the republican cause at the time. It is estimated that over 100,000 people attended Bobby's funeral.and  an international outpouring of grief and anti British demonstrations were to take place. Protests were held in Paris, Milan, Ghent , Australia and Greece. In a ripple effect that was felt across the world.
In the end the strike was called off after ten of the prisoners had died as a result of the hunger strike. And although Thatcher claimed victory , her government conceded the hunger strikers demands soon after the protest ended and even she, the main adversary of Sands and his comrades was moved to say years later " It was possible to admire the courage of Sands and the other hunger strikers who died. Even today the legacy of Bobby Sands is respected not only in Ireland but all over the world.

Following Bobby Sand;s death Nelson Mandela led a hunger strike by prisoners on Robben Island to improve their own conditions.The hunger strikers who died alongside Sands still continue to provide inspiration to political prisoners everywhere.

Many years later it is perhaps difficult to fully appreciate the sacrifices made by Sands and his comrades, which even if you disagree with the aims for which they gave their lives remains a monumental testament to the power of the human spirit.
It should be noted that their fight won huge support in Ireland, North and South and around the world 
And although Thatcher claimed victory , her government conceded the hunger strikers demands soon after the protest ended and even she, the main adversary of Sands and his comrades was moved to say years later " It was possible to admire the courage of Sands and the other hunger strikers who died."

Mahatma Gandhi used political fasting to great effect against the British in India and to pressure Hindus and Muslims to halt sectarian violence. He came to regard the hunger strike as one of the most powerful tools in the arsenal of non-violent resistance.

 Another  example was Bhagat Singh. Singh was an Indian national who was an active participant in the Indian independence movement. He was an enthusiastic and determined revolutionary. Unlike Gandhi who leaned towards pacifism, Singh was more committed to the ideas of socialism and believed that only through revolutionary war could India be freed from British colonial rule.

When he was arrested on the charges of murdering British police inspector Saunders and Chanan Singh, Bhagat Singh was arrested and taken to prison in Punjab. Whilst there, along with other prisoners he began a hunger strike. His hunger strike was taken in order to raise a voice against the unsanitary and unhealthy conditions of the jail. The clothes, rooms, and all basic necessities provided by the authorities were dirty and unfit for purpose. Besides of this they were also coerced to do excessive manual labor which was intolerable and torturous not only for Singh but also for many other prisoners.

Bhagat started his hunger strike in June 1929 and he was successful enough to gain public sympathy and support. Jawaharlal Nehru, who would later become the first prime minister of India visited Singh in prison and was deeply affected when he saw how much pain he was in. Like with the suffragettes before, The British government planned to use counter insurgent tactics to the strike. One example was to place a well in front of Singh and the other hunger strikers in order to break their spirit, but their tactic served to no use and none of them ate food. Even after a court case where he was forced to attend in spite of his poor health and a transfer to another prison, Singh still carried on with his hunger strike. By this time he had lost 14 pounds. This further fueled popularity that crossed beyond the boundaries of Punjab. Only after the insistence of his own father did Singh decide to call an end to his struggle and in October 1929 after 116 days his hunger strike ended.

South African anti-apartheid activists, Turkish Marxists, Palestinian militants and Tibetan monks have likewise used hunger strikes with varying degrees of success, along with thousands of ordinary prisoners protesting solitary confinement and other abuses.  Cesar Chavez during the struggle for farm workers rights in the United States, and the prisoners incarcerated by the US in Guantanamo Bay.   

The demands by hunger strikers vary but are, in all cases, a reflection of broader issues and social, political and economic injustices. For example, the 1981 Irish Republican prisoners’ hunger strike demand for the return of Special Category Status reflected the broader context of “the troubles” in Northern Ireland. 

Hunger strikes have become one of the prominent actions of opponents of the regime in Turkey, along with other resistance actions that have been carried out in the prisons of Diyarbakır (Amed) and elsewhere, following the 1980 military coup.

Kemal Pir, Hayri Durmuş, Akif Yılmaz and Ali Çiçek lost their lives in the “great hunger strike” of 1982, triggering great resistance in the prisons. The ‘Diyarbakır Dungeons Resistance’ is accepted as one of the turning points in the struggle of the Kurdish people for their rights in Turkey.

Six prisoners lost their lives as a result of hunger strike actions in Diyarbakır and Sağmalcılar Prisons in 1984, demanding the abolition of the prison uniform, an end to torture, the provision of humane and social living conditions and the recognition of rights for political prisoners.

There were mass hunger strikes in many prisons in 1995 and 1996, and 14 prisoners lost their lives, two in 1995 and 12 in 1996. Hundreds of prisoners joined the hunger strike and ‘to-the-death’ strike actions in 2000-2007, protesting against the F-type prisons. A total of 69 people lost their lives, 48 prisoners in the prisons, 13 prisoners after release, and seven on the outside who were supporters of the prisoners.

In the last 10 years, prison hunger strikes have re-emerged through a series of actions led by Kurdish political prisoners. The main demand that has featured in all the mass hunger strikes in Turkey’s prisons in this period has been the release of Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Öcalan from solitary confinement, and the securing of his physical freedom.

In 2012, hunger strikes in the prisons demanding Abdullah Öcalan’s release from solitary confinement continued for 68 days. As a result of tens of thousands of prisoners joining the hunger strike action, the gates of İmralı prison were opened and Öcalan met with a peace delegation.

In 2016, as Öcalan was again being prevented from seeing his lawyer and his solitary confinement conditions were gradually worsening, Kurdish politicians and liberals started a hunger strike in Diyarbakır. This action ended after Abdullah Öcalan was allowed to meet with his brother Mehmet Öcalan.

In 2017, Kemal Gün began a hunger strike in Tunceli (Dersim), demanding that the state hand over his son’s bones to him. He ended the hunger strike on the 90th day when he was promised that his son’s bones would be given to him. Also that same year, educationalists Nuriye Gülmen and Semih Özakça began a long hunger strike in Ankara demanding to be reinstated after they were dismissed by statutory decree.

In 2018, the frequent hunger strikes over previous years relating to serious human rights violations once again became a major agenda item under the leadership of Kurdish political prisoners demanding freedom for Abdullah Öcalan. In November that year, Leyla Güven, co-chair of the Democratic Society Congress (DTK) led the greatest mass hunger strike in the history of Turkey and Kurdistan. The hunger strike spread quickly through many prisons across Turkey and the demands of the Kurdish prısoners were the same: end Abdullah Öcalan’s prison isolation conditions.

Tens of thousands of people joined the hunger strike action of 2018 both inside and outside the prisons. And during the last months of the strike, dozens of prisoners changed it to a ‘to-the-death’ strike. This action continued for 200 days, and while the Peace Mothers ran resistance actions outside the prisons in the streets, significant resistance actions continued inside the prisons.

Zülküf Gezen, Ayten Beçet, Zehra Sağlam, Medya Çınar, Yonca Akıcı, Siraç Yüksek, Mahsum Pamay, Ümit Acar and Uğur Şakar sacrificed themselves and lost their lives in their protests against Abdullah Öcalan’s solitary confinement.

Here in Wales an activist from Newport by the name of Imam Sis, 32, of Newport, had gone without food for 161 days in protest over the treatment of Abdullah Ocalan.

On 26 May 2019, lawyers from Asrın Law Office announced that they had had a meeting with Öcalan. With the breaking of his solitary confinement in this way, the mass hunger strike came to an end.

On 27 November 2020, with the renewed and ever increasing severity of Öcalan’s solitary confinement, political prisoners once again began a hunger strike action (which also included, among its demands, that rights abuses of prisoners should end). There were also ongoing hunger strike actions in support of Turkey’s prisoners in Maxmur Refugee Camp in Iraqi Kurdistan and Lavrio Refugee Camp in Greece, where there were Kurds residing.

  

 

One of the earliest Palestinian hunger strikes was the seven-day hunger strike in Askalan (Ashkelon) prison in 1970. During this strike the prisoners’ demands were written on a cigarette pack as they were prevented from having notebooks, and included a refusal to address their jailers as “sir”. The prisoners won their demand and never had to use ”sir” again, but only after Abdul-Qader Abu Al-Fahem died after being force-fed, becoming the first martyr of the Palestinian prisoner's movement..

Hunger strikes at Askalan prison continued to be carried out through the 1970s.  In addition, two more prisoners, Rasim Halawe and Ali Al-Ja’fari, died after being force-fed during a hunger strike at Nafha prison in 1980. As a result of these and other hunger strikes, Palestinian prisoners were able to secure certain improvements to their prison conditions, including being allowed family pictures, stationery, books and newspapers.  

In recent years, ending the practice of administrative detention has been a persistent demand by Palestinian prisoners, given Israel;'s escalation of its use since the outbreak of the Second Intifada in 2000. For example, the mass  2012 hunger strike, which involved nearly 2,000 prisoners, demanded an end to the use of administrative detention, isolation and other punitive measures including the denial of family visits to Gaza prisoners. The strike ended after Israel agreed to limit the use of administrative detention.owever, Israel soon reneged on the agreement, leading to another mass hunger strike in 2014 by over administrative detainess pushing for an end to this practice. The hunger strike ended 63 days later without having achieved an end to administrative detention. 

In addition, there have been several individual hunger strikes sometimes coinciding with or leading to decisions to begin wider hunger strikes. Indeed both the 2012 and 2014 hunger strikes were sparked by individual hunger strikes demanding an end to the use of administrative detention. The individual hunger strikers included Hana Shalabi, Khader Adnan, Thaer Halahleh and Bilal Diab, all of whom secured an end to their administrative detention.  However, some of the individual hunger strikers were re-arrested after their release as in the case of Samer Issawi, Thaer Halahleh, and Tareq Qa’adan, as was Khader Adnan, who was released after a prolonged hunger strike protesting his re-arrest in 2015.

 As with other forms of resistance within and outside prison walls hunger strikes are acts of resistance through which Palestinians assert their political existence and demand their rights. It is vital to sustain and nurture this resistance. In addition to giving strength to and supporting the prisoners in their struggle for rights, this form of resistance continuously and powerfully inspires hope among Palestinians at large and the solidarity movement. It is our responsibility to both support Palestinian prisoners – and to work for a time when Palestinians no longer need to resort to such acts of resistance through which their only recourse is to put their lives on the line.   

At first glance, such acts of self-destruction might seem oddly irrational or self-defeating. Many forms of resistance , such as a classic workers’ strike – aim to place economic and other costs on opponents. Yet with the hunger strike, the most severe costs are suffered by protesters, who risk pain, bodily damage and even death.

Nonetheless, detainees know that the refusal of food can shame the authorities who bear ultimate responsibility for the lives of those in their custody.

By striking, hunger strikers also exert some measure of control against a system that micromanages their lives and strips them of agency. They demonstrate that they are sovereign over their own bodies and that the most serious decision of all – over life and death – is still in their hands.

As Guantanamo detainee Lakhdar Boumediene put it, "They could lock me up for no reason and with no chance to argue my innocence. They could torture me, deprive me of sleep, put me in an isolation cell, control every single aspect of my life. But they couldn’t make me swallow their food."

Also for detained migrants and refugees, the choice of such an extreme technique is powerful evidence of the cruelty they are subject to in detention, and their moral determination to resist. Caged and herded like animals, they exhibit the characteristically human capacity of mastering their natural appetites in pursuit of a higher ideal.

While authorities across the world frequently attempt to dismiss hunger strikers as pathological and mentally ill, the strike is in reality a careful and deliberate form of political action. As such, hunger striking should be respected as an expression of the fundamental human right to protest, as set out in Article 20 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

This means that authorities  must refrain from force-feeding, and all other forms of intimidation and listen to the just claims of detainees regarding their treatment.

Through hunger strikes, prisoners no longer remain silent recipients of the prison authorities’ ongoing violence: Instead, they inflict violence upon their own bodies in order to impose their demands. In other words, hunger strikes are a space outside the reach of the  state’s power. The body of the striking prisoner unsettles one of the most fundamental relationships to violence behind prison walls, the one in which the  state and its prison authorities control every aspect of their lives behind bars and are the sole inflictors of violence. In effect, prisoners reverse the object and subject relationship to violence by fusing both into a single body - the body of the striking prisoner – and in so doing reclaim agency. They assert their status as political prisoners, refuse their reduction to the status of “security prisoner”, and claim their rights and existence. 

Palestinian detainee Abo Hawwash suffered a lot as he was on the brink of death after spending 141 days on a hunger strike. During his recent hunger strike, he lost the ability to speak, to move and went into a coma.but today at least he can claim victory is his, and has succeeded in gaining his freedom back.and proved once again the Palestinian’s ability to win against the occupation. And prove his possession of a great and indomitable will, His courageous fight also proves that from Kurdistan to Palestine to Great Britain,  hunger strikes still matter,