Dear Qesser,
We, the BDS@UCL organising group (made up of staff at UCL), write to you at this hour in unequivocal solidarity with you and all your courageous comrades currently on hunger strike across British prisons as part of the larger movement for a free Palestine.
As you reach 45 days of your hunger strike, we are deeply concerned that appropriate care and legal justice has been denied to you, as well as contact with your family.
We are outraged by the injustice committed by the government, police and judicial system by holding you in prison for over a year without charge, and denying you bail and access to a fair trial.
Our institution, UCL, has a duty of care towards you, one of our students. We urge UCL to write to the relevant authorities to demand that you receive proper medical care, that your communication is not censored, that your rights as someone not convicted of a crime are respected.
The silence from the mainstream media is deafening but we stand in solidarity with you, Amu Gib, Heba Muraisi, Jon Cink, Teuta Hoxha, Kamran Ahmed, Umer Khalid, Lewie Chiaramello and all of the Filton 24.
We demand the immediate release of you all on bail and the fulfilment of your five demands:
• Immediate Bail
• An end to all censorship
• The right to a fair trial
• The deproscription of Palestine Action
• Shut Elbit down and for the British government to cut ties with all arms companies complicit in the genocide in Palestine
We hear you love poetry and so we repeat the words of the distinguished Palestinian poet and educator, and beloved UCL alumni, Dr Refaat Alareer:
And We Live On…
And another day in Gaza
Another day in Palestine
A day in prison
And we live on
Despite Israel's very much identified flying objecs
That we see more than our family and friends
And despite Israel's death sentences
Like lead
Cast upon the head
As we sleep
Like acid rain
Gnawing at our life
Clinging to it like a flea to a kitten
And stuffed in our throats
The moment we say “Amen”
To the prayers of old women and men
Despite Israel's birds of death
Hovering only two meters from our breath
From our dreams and prayers
Blocking their ways to God.
Despite that.
We dream and pray,
Clinging to life even harder
Every time a dear one's life
Is forcibly rooted up.
We live.
We live.
We do.
May 27, 2012
Refaat Alareer
From If I must die: Poetry and Prose
In solidarity,
BDS@UCL organising group
