What should happen about the hunger strikers?

[noblegiraffe]

There are a group of people currently on remand in prison awaiting trial for criminal activities taken in support of the (currently) proscribed terrorist group Palestine Action. Some of them have gone on hunger strike and are suffering health impacts and some have been hospitalised.

Their demands appear to be:
to be released on bail
for Palestine Action to be de-proscribed as a terrorist group
for the UK to stop selling arms to Israel

I'm seeing various MPs writing earnest letters to David Lammy as Justice Secretary, saying that he must meet with them urgently to discuss their demands.

And then what?

It should go without saying that I really don't want people to die, and I'm sure that their families must be frantic, but what is actually expected to happen here? The proscription of Palestine Action is being appealed in the courts and I don't think people threatening to kill themselves should impact the democratic process.

Being released on bail? While I agree that it is shocking that they have been held in prison for 2 years while awaiting trial, because the justice system should work faster than that, they are active members of a currently proscribed terrorist organisation. At least one of the hunger strikers took part in the attack on Elbit where a female police officer had her back broken by one of the activists who attacked her with a sledgehammer while she lay on the ground. There's plenty of video footage of this, and I don't think the hunger strikers have condemned it. If they did get bail by threatening to kill themselves, surely everyone would then give it a go?

So what should happen?

I agree with much of what you've said. I also think a hunger strike should never win and have demands met. And I include suffragettes in that.
I believe the DWP debt collection department have a policy of backing off if someone threatens suicide as well. I was victim for years to someone who used suicide threats to control and manipulate others others though so I might be very hardline on this stuff.

You aren’t hardline. I’m someone who has struggled with self harm and suicide ideation. Nobody should give in to a threat of suicide.

The further into this post I read the more confused I became

Thanks, I've never heard any of these phrases before.

I still don't understand the 'south of the ocean thinking' though - where does it originate from, who is it applied to?

South of the ocean is Scotland, don’t ask me why. Maybe it’s some viking hang over, I grew up in the northeast of England so we do have some old Norse slang.

This is complete bullshit. It doesn’t even come up as a phrase when I internet search it. Can you provide some evidence it has an actual etymology?

Quote : "I wonder if attacking British national security at this time of extremely heightened international tension should possibly be considered as treason. I have literally no time for it."

I suspect this a gut feeling thing, about treason ?

I admit me defending the rights of the accused to hunger strike is my gut feeling. They have a right to protest against being held, especially given the political nature. And because it is my gut feeling, I can't explain myself very well. Not being a legal person etc.

And yes, with it being a political nature, with the UK having a system of separation between the judicial system, politicians should not interfere. However, it is Parliament who write the laws that the judiciary interpret and act on.

So the MP's have a right to fact find, look after their constituents, and mull over law changes they think might be needed.

Re treason, and Ireland. What is in my mind is that as far as I am aware, Britain holds the record of being the biggest cause of independence celebrations in the world. And ultimately, Britain has pretty much lost every one now. Britain lost the Irish wars of independence in the 1920's, because we used to round people up, put them against the wall, and shoot them for treason.

We don't do that now, because we changed laws, and history changed us as a nation. Protest is a good way of getting laws changed.

Re bail. Can I use Assange as an example ? Spent many years locked up, and now a free man. If he had not fought, he would be doing a 30 year stretch in the US. I am not keen on the guy, but the thing is for me, it is up to the state to prove guilt in order to deprive someone of their freedom.

So yes, I am speaking of my gut feeling. And my gut feeling is that the right of protest to try to get laws changed is a good thing.

To add to my above post, while I do not 100% agree that the hunger strikers are political prisoners, I also do not 100% disagree.

I find the notion of proscribed orgs troublesome. It is potentially into thought crime territory.

What I do know though is that many countries around the world do hold political prisoners. Countries where thought crime is a real thing.

My view is that the UK laws should be designed in such a way that the accusation of holding political prisoners does not hold water. Other wise, how can we as a nation point our collective finger at the likes of Putin, and say " you bad" ?

I notice that none of the details on each of the people’s bio states that one of them attacked a police officer with a weapon and broke her spine. Strange that eh?

Of course. I will have all the evidence transcribed, digitised, peer reviewed and will provide,

I’ve googled it and there is nothing in the internet about it. Never heard of it before. It doesn’t make sense to me as a saying. Why would people from Scotland say it and what ocean are they talking about

I haven't said that these people don't have the right to hunger strike. Of course they do, people have bodily autonomy. The point of this thread is to discuss whether anything should be done about it. Does the fact that they are on hunger strike add any more urgency to their demands, or any more weight to them? There are MPs writing letters to Lammy saying that the situation is becoming extremely urgent and therefore he must address them. Does he actually need to do anything other than look over their list of demands and say 'no'?

They want to be released on bail. One of their group was released on temporary bail and absconded. The idea that they should be released on bail should be dismissed for this reason alone.

They are a group who have been plotting, and executing plans to destroy British military assets at a time when we are at war with Russia. I wouldn't be surprised at all if Russia was part of any of this. We know from PA training sessions that Palestine Action had further plans to attack more RAF bases. I genuinely don't understand people's desires to downplay this or suggest that these people don't pose any risk to the British public just because they didn't all hit that police officer with a sledgehammer. There are other ways to endanger the British public, and attacking our military assets is definitely one of those.

Their demands should not be given in to what they did was awful and the people seen on demos after that organisation were banned and aligning themselves with this organisation just took the police away from investigating other crimes. Criminals must love people like this as they use up a lot of police time.

@noblegiraffe

Re Lammy and the MPs, Quote : "Does he actually need to do anything other than look over their list of demands and say 'no'?"

He has that option for sure. But it's not the protestors demands here, it's that his fellow MPs wanting to discuss the conditions the accused are being held in that matters.

Quote : "They want to be released on bail. One of their group was released on temporary bail and absconded. The idea that they should be released on bail should be dismissed for this reason alone."

Fair point. Makes me wonder though, why is someone being held on remand but not considered so dangerous that they can be released to attend a wedding ? And was there an ankle bracelet etc?

Quote: " They are a group who have been plotting, and executing plans to destroy British military assets at a time when we are at war with Russia."

The first part, fine. If the state has the evidence put them on trial. That is a big part of the issue here: the amount of time before trial.

And we are at war with Russia ? That's news to me. If we are at war I am amazed they got anywhere near the planes, allegedly.

Quote : "I genuinely don't understand people's desires to downplay this or suggest that these people don't pose any risk to the British public just because they didn't all hit that police officer with a sledgehammer."

Its not a case of downplaying it. It's a case of not up-playing it. Sure, hold violent offenders on remand, but what you are talking of here is guilt by association.

Quote : " There are other ways to endanger the British public, and attacking our military assets is definitely one of those."

So someone on conditional bail with an ankle bracelet can just wander into a military base and destroy stuff ? That's a sorry state of affairs if our military can't even defend it's parked up assets.

Was that not the thing at the time with the planes ? How on earth can folk get anywhere near them with cans of paint in the first place ?

Of course we're at war with Russia, it's just not a conventional one. They've been attacking us for years. Part of the nature of this is that they're trying to damage us in a way that means a lot of us don't even notice what's going on.

You don't know that we're at war with Russia? What do you think is going on in Ukraine?

You know that there have been Russian warships cruising the English Channel?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c997vm74ydvo

All the cyberattacks?

Naivety is possibly an issue here.

If anyone doesn't feel despair at British people attacking our own military assets, then I suggest you listen to The Wargame podcast from Sky which gives horrifying detail about the lack of resources Britain has to defend itself from Russia. https://news.sky.com/story/the-wargame-podcast-what-if-russia-attacked-the-uk-13381047 And then be blasé about putting aeroplanes out of action?

With the chief of NATO saying that Russia could attack within 5 years and we're facing war on the scale of WWI and WWII, and with France and Germany reintroducing conscription, we really cannot afford to be complacent about this.

We are in a proxy war with Russia via Ukraine. Why do you think we're giving them money? It's cheaper than sending our armed force in to fight.

We're also in a form of cold war - see all the cyber attacks, undersea cables being attacked and so on.

My DH is RFA and his ship is one of those chasing the Russians up and down the Channel - it happens all the time. Like this:

BBC News - Royal Navy shadows Russian submarine through English Channel
www.bbc.com/news/articles/cm2v7j4mmgz o

Russian warships in the channel is called freedom of navigation. And it's perfectly normal that they are observed when transiting. It is not as act of war to exercise freedom of navigation as per UNCLOS. UN convention on the law of the sea.

And no, I aint a Putin apologist. I am pro rule of law. UNCLOS is the same law our carrier group recently used to transit the South China Sea.

We can't say freedom of navigation applies to us and not to them. That's what the PRC do.

The poster that you are maligning has been here for aaaages and posts on lots of different topics. You are the one who is coming across as having vested interests and making yourself look daft with conspiracy theories about known posters.

Incidentally, if anyone thinks that the Palestine Action attacks on military assets is only limited to the Brize Norton planes, this is from Hansard relating to the proscription.

"Since its inception in 2020, Palestine Action has orchestrated a nationwide campaign of direct criminal action against businesses and institutions, including key national infrastructure and defence firms that provide services and supplies to support Ukraine, NATO, Five Eyes allies and the UK defence enterprise."

Who benefits from destroying equipment that would support Ukraine and NATO?

And we were in Salisbury admiring the cathedral.

Someone did say a few weeks ago on here and I’ve read in the media as well that there have been more attacks by Palestine Action against other U.K. military assets which haven’t been reported on due to national security. And I guess some of that may influence the decision to keep people on remand. The one who’s currently on the run has been arrested and imprisoned before his most recent offence. So they don’t seem to learn and are happy to keep undertaking more attacks which seem to be getting increasingly violent.

And all of these things do indeed make it bad that fuckwits can wander onto military bases and damage planes, yes.

This seems pretty alarming.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4gpgj6d4e6o.amp