By Calla Mairead Walsh
After the first two to three days of a hunger strike, the body begins breaking down its own fat stores for energy, then its muscles, vital organs, and bone marrow, eating itself alive. By day ten, significant medical intervention is required.
As of September 1, 2025, 29-year-old British political prisoner Teuta Hoxha is on her 22nd day of hunger strike in HMP Peterborough, and she has yet to be hospitalized or receive adequate medical care.
Hoxha is one of 24 activists arrested in connection with Palestine Action’s raid on an Elbit Systems factory in Filton, Gloucestershire, in August last year.
One of the 'Filton 24' detained indefinitely under the UK's "Terrorism Act" while awaiting trial next spring, Hoxha is accused of participating in the heroic dismantling of an Elbit Systems weapons factory, which reportedly caused the Israeli arms manufacturing giant €1 million in damages.
The 'Filton 24' have experienced what can only be described as torture at the hands of the state — violent raids, sleep deprivation, solitary confinement in special counter-terrorism units, revocation of basic rights.
Hoxha's 17-year-old sister said the prison's unfair treatment of her greatly intensified after the UK's illegitimate proscription of Palestine Action as a "terrorist" group.
Hoxha was moved from HMP Bronzefield to HMP Peterborough, a for-profit prison run by the private company Sodexo, on the day MPs voted for proscription.
At least 75 medical professionals recently sent a letter to National Health Service (NHS) England and the prison authorities, warning that she is at risk of cardiac arrest.
Hoxha's loved ones report that the prison is medically neglecting her as her physical and mental health quickly deteriorates — her hair is falling out, her skin is discolored, and her last check-up showed "dangerously low blood sugar, elevated ketone levels, low blood pressure, a high pulse rate, and low oxygen.
Supporters on the outside are organizing an urgent campaign to call and email the prison administration, demanding they give Hoxha electrolyte sachets and meet the demands of her strike: the reinstatement of her job in the prison library and the delivery of her mail that the prison administration is withholding from her.
As of 30 August, supporters reported that the pressure was working: all of Hoxha's demands had been met, except for written confirmation of the reinstatement of her job, so the strike continues.
A friend told The Observer on Hoxha's condition, “She looks a lot thinner...I think she now realizes that they actually don’t care whether she lives or dies, so she’s not going to give up until they respond to the demands.” As Irish hunger striker Dolours Price said, “He who blinks first is lost."
Hoxha is not alone, though. When 35-year-old Casey Goonan, the only political prisoner in the US of the 2024 student intifada, heard about Hoxha on 26 August, he decided to join her strike until her demands are met.
Casey's cellmate in Santa Rita Jail in Dublin, California, also joined. As a diabetic, refusing to take in food is especially risky for Casey, but they have organized successful collective hunger strikes in the past, and they believe that "solidarity is actions, not words."
To announce their strike, Goonan published a statement saying, "The Palestine solidarity movement in the West cannot abandon people like [Hoxha] who have risked their lives and continue to do so in resistance to this intolerable condition of genocide...Solidarity with T. Hoxha and all prisoners of the Palestine solidarity movement! RAZE THE WALLS! LIBERATE ALL PRISONERS OF SETTLER EMPIRE!"
Goonan is facing up to 20 years in federal prison with "terrorism enhancement" for allegedly burning police vehicles at the University of California, Berkeley.
Like the weaponization of counter-terrorism lawfare in the UK cases, this "terrorism enhancement" addition to Goonan’s charges gives the federal government far more room for abuse and draconian overreach in their sentencing and treatment.
Like Hoxha, Goonan has been repeatedly targeted for the political nature of his alleged crime and deliberately isolated from other inmates. Just this summer, he and others like him were retaliated against for filing a grievance, and had their phone calls, visitations, and commissary revoked for over a month.
Several times, the state has pushed back the date of Goonan's sentencing hearing, which was supposed to take place in April but is now set for September 23, 2025.
Meanwhile, every week, supporters gather outside HMP Peterborough to demand the freedom of the 'Filton 24'. CAGE International just shared a solidarity message from Mansoor Adayfi, a former Guantánamo prisoner who spent years on a hunger strike and faced brutal force-feeding to protest his imprisonment and torture, who is now using his platform to advocate for Hoxha.
However, most organizations in the West have fallen completely silent about the ongoing hunger strike, part of their tendency to abandon those facing repression.
As New York-based Palestinian activist Nerdeen Kiswani commented, "Teuta is now paying the price for real solidarity. And while many celebrate resistance in theory, too many turn their backs when activists like her face prison cells, repression, and starvation."
The prison is today and historically a key site of struggle, and the hunger strike is a key tactic there, as the Palestinian and Irish prisoner movements show us.
As Western governments' crackdown against anti-Zionist activism intensifies, the movement will have to fortify itself against repression and build support structures for the growing number of political prisoners, not only the 'Filton 24' and Goonan, but others facing heavy criminal charges in the US, such as Elias Rodriguez, Jakhi McCray, and Tarek Bazrouk as well.
To save Hoxha and Casey's lives, call and email HMP Peterborough to demand they meet all of Hoxha's demands. For the latest updates, instructions, and set of demands, go to instagram.com/prisoners4palestine and x.com/Workshops4Gaza.
Calla Mairead Walsh is an American journalist and human rights activist.
(The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of Press TV.)
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