Last week, I attended part of a press conference held by some of the, now former, prisoners who staged a hunger strike late last year.
I couldn’t stay for the whole thing. Other meetings, etc.
What I saw was a group of impressive, articulate, dignified, politically engaged young people who came close to death last year while protesting their treatment and the conditions in which they were being held.
I’m glad that they survived their ordeal, and were able to share their experiences, thoughts and perspectives.
The stories they told were harrowing in places. Kamran Ahmad recounted the morning officers came to his home to arrest him. Handcuffed by an open door for several hours on a freezing November day, he was left to get colder and colder.
His mother, who had limited mobility and needed food prior to taking medication, was barred from her own kitchen. She should go to a local takeaway, the office in charge told her.
Some of the stories they told were comical, absurd even. “Guess what we found in your home?”, an interviewing officer asked one of the other former prisoners, Teuta Hoxha. “The Palestine flag”.
Hoxha, Ahmad and several other prisoners went on to mount prolonged hunger strikes, which nearly killed them. They finally called off the strikes in January this year. They were all released on bail the following month, after more than a year in prison without trial.
It brought to an end a rather ignoble period in British prisons history.
Like many others, I don’t agree with or support the alleged actions that resulted in these young people being imprisoned in the first place. Nor did I agree with a number of the things they said in last week’s press conference.
But that’s not really the point.
It should go without saying that the cause of prison and wider criminal justice reform isn’t about picking sides, or deciding which prisoners deserve to be treated with fairness, dignity and respect, and which do not. Either all suspects and detainees deserve to be treated with humanity and compassion, or none do.
It should also go without saying that hearing from, and speaking to, those whose beliefs, views and actions you might disagree with is the very essence of living in an open, democratic society.
Whether or not one agrees with why these young people ended up in prison, their accounts of their treatment were important to hear.
What I saw last week was people speaking, and others turning up to listen. In the end, that’s what I was there for too.
