Solidarity with the hunger strikers

On Tuesday, I visited Bronzefield prison to accompany Jeremy Corbyn on a visit to Amu. Mr. Corbyn confirmed that a group of concerned MP’s have been asking unanswered questions and seeking an emergency meeting with the minister of Justice, David Lammy, while he denies knowing about them.

Amu has lost just over 5kg and is finding it harder each day to muster up the endless storytelling, positivity and jokes they normally abound with, but what is clear is that they haven’t lost their sense of justice. They insist that this hunger strike is not to shine a light on them, but on our governments complicity in genocide by allowing Ebit systems to export arms to Israel.

The images of the children being starved in Gaza activates every cell of my parental instinct, but somehow, the images of Amu, getting thinner and thinner have brought the reality of starvation into my abundant, privileged world- a world that I imagined to be somehow safer by living in the idyllic British countryside.

On my farm, we have an activist space called the Land Skills Hub, run by young people who seek to find community. The hub exists to build collective hope when it seems there is nothing we can move in a world where we have access to abundance and opportunity, yet horror moves around us.

Young people come here to learn skills in farming, making apple juice and jam, building homes, and finding ways to take tangible action to create a just society. There is nothing scary about what we do. We are sharing skills to create the conditions for a lasting peace.

This past June 2025, Amu breezed through the door of my house bringing hand spun wool and folks songs.

They asked what they could do to help, then built a washing machine shed. We practiced some folk songs, then they left, saying they had some work to do, but would be back to help with plum harvest.

The next thing we heard was that Amu had been arrested.

A group from the Hub went to the police station as soon as we knew Amu was being held inside, in solitary confinement. We couldn’t get in, but someone inside told us they heard someone singing folks songs across the corridors.

Amu, allegedly entered RAF Brix Norton airforce base and sprayed red paint on war planes to stop them being sent by Britain to help Isreal commit genocide. This has not been proven in court, yet Amu is still being treated as if they were a terrorist.

My grandfather fought in World War 2, landing on the beach on D-Day and travelling across Europe to liberate Jewish victims from concentration camps. As a child, I remember going through an old box of his black and white photos picturing bodies so thin the skin clung to their ribs, stacked in piles.

At this moment, history repeats. In Palestine, 50,000, some say 65,000 civilians, including 18,000 children, have been killed. Many by a deliberate strategy of mass starvation and human-induced famine.

My farmers’ organisation, the Landworkers Alliance, is part of a twinning project with farmers in Gaza. Our members have visited Gaza, to witness the Palestinian farmers trying to grow the food they need, despite the difficulty of cultivating land under occupation. Smallholders here in the UK could feel their pain, but it felt impossible to know what to do. We sent petitions, wrote letters, went to marches, sold Palestinian merchandise, but nothing shifted.

Amu and the hunger strikers' unfounded incarceration has been a catalyst in this mad moment when we realise that most of us have been doing too little, too late. I have no idea if my friend was responsible for the red spray paint that has awoken courage, but I do know that their sense of justice was far ahead of the tide that is finally turning.

As the suffragette statue in parliament square reads, “Courage calls to Courage everywhere”.

So many people are taking emergency action. There are flotillas with ships full of food who have attempted to cross the waters towards Gaza several times, elderly are being arrested across the country for holding signs.The genocide is now finally recognised to be a breach of international humanitarian law. This mobilisation must be sustained as other wars rage on in Congo and Sudan, and more human conflict will continue to arise as climate change and inequality leave an ongoing stream of crises.

Everyone will need to cultivate a sense of duty, resilience and strategic skill to resolve and heal conflict with compassion. If we criminalise and imprison our most honourable, where are we headed?

Alongside growing food on my smallholding, I work in defence of civil liberties globally. At the United Nations level, I am seeing the increasing repression of social movements. The “chill effect” which follows the threat of extreme criminalisation is making it difficult for farmers, indigenous peoples and ordinary citizens everywhere to speak up for what they believe in.

Mobilisation by civil society is the only way to redress social issues and hold accountability when governments have failed. Civil liberties are fundamental to enable this effectiveness of this democratic recourse. We must all fight for the right to act in defense of a world where everyone can harvest and tend, eat with our families, and sleep securely without blood on our hands.

I urgently call for the UK Government to take action towards the truly sensible demands of these young hunger strikers:

-An end to all censorship in prison

-Immediate bail

-The right to a fair trial

-The deproscription of Palestine Action

-The shutting down of Elbit Systems, Israeli weapons manufacturer

John Mc Donnell, has raised a motion in the Houses of Parliament, now signed by 40 MP’s asking for urgent action on the part of the Ministry of Justice to intervene in their case, but David Lammy has yet to take action.

Immediate bail, until a fair trial is held, must happen now- or we are responsible for the lives of these young people.

We have failed the 18,000 children who have died in Gaza, but we can’t continue to fail the peacekeepers of this generation.

The plum harvest, then the apple harvest all happened this year on our farm, without Amu.

At the moment we are planning our Winter Solstice- with candles and greenery and a big feast - and we want Amu there - leading us in songs of hope.

Jyoti Fernandes

I am a smallholder in West Dorset, blessed to have a home on a hill overlooking the sea with an orchard bursting with plums and apples, undergrazed by a flock of Jacob sheep.

Today I have tried to work on the farm, but I’m consumed with worry for my friend, a bright young person who is a part of the land skills hub called Amu Gib, aged 30, who is currently on the 41st day of hunger strike, along with 5 other hunger strikers Qesser Zuhrah, Heba Muraisi, Jon Cink, Teuta Hoxha and Kamran Ahmed.

All 6 are among 32 individuals currently detained in prisons in England for their alleged involvement in "disarmament actions" against companies the activists say are complicit in the genocide of Palestine. Amu, and all of the other hunger strikers, are being held on remand- which means without trial. I am speaking from a personal perspective about Amu, because I know them, but each of these prisoners is part of our movement, and we stand in solidarity with all of them and honour their bravery.

Amu Gib, co-founder of the Land Skills Hub