Alaa Abd el-Fattah knows about hunger strikes. When I was locked up in a cell next to him in Cairo’s notorious Tora prison in early 2014, he and I would stride the exercise yard discussing Egyptian politics, history, political reform, and – yes – forms of protest and resistance, including starving yourself.
Hunger strikes, he explained, are the ultimate tool of the powerless. When all other forms of agency are stripped away, all that remains is to exercise control over the one thing left: your own body. That would become my first lesson in strikes.
Alaa is Egypt’s best-known political prisoner. He was one of the young, social media-savvy activists who helped move millions of Egyptians on to the streets in the revolution of 2011. Because of his popularity, charisma and capacity to mobilise people, he also has the dubious distinction of being locked up by every regime since he’s been alive (including several that lasted barely a year).
Soon after I arrived at Tora, Alaa and a group of other activists launched their own hunger strike to force the prison to respect our rights. We were only allowed two hours of exercise a day, and one family visit every two weeks; both in clear violation of Egypt’s own laws that said prisoners in pre-trial detention were entitled to four hours of exercise and weekly visits. They had already smuggled out letters to the press announcing the strike.
At mealtimes, trays of food would clatter to the floor in the corridor outside the strikers’ cells as they shouted their demands. At times it got heated, with the guards insisting they were weighing the food and knew the prisoners were secretly eating (they weren’t). But in the end, after a week of rancour, Alaa and his colleagues won. The prison authorities backed down, fearing a ferocious public backlash should any of the prisoners die.
And that’s lessons two and three in hunger strike strategy: there is no point doing it if nobody knows, and limit your demands to what is within your rights. It is vital to hold on to the moral high ground.
That is exactly what his mother, Laila Soueif, is doing now. The extraordinarily resilient, stoic 68-year-old grandmother has been on strike since 30 September, the day after her son was due for release.
After being arrested in 2019, Alaa was convicted and sentenced in 2021 to five years for “publishing false news”, in an utterly spurious case widely seen as an attempt to silence a prominent democratic voice. That sentence should have ended on 29 September last year. But with astonishing cynicism, the Egyptian government decided it would calculate his term from the day he was convicted, ignoring time served in pre-trial detention as its own laws require, and adding two years to Alaa’s time behind bars.
Alaa and Laila are both British-Egyptian dual citizens, which means the British government has a responsibility to make sure their rights are respected. The foreign secretary, David Lammy, advocated for Alaa on a recent trip to Cairo, but so far without even gaining consular access. That is why she and I have been holding daily one-hour vigils outside Downing Street calling on the prime minister to intervene, and why I have also been on my own more limited hunger strike of 21 days to help draw attention to this symbolic case.
Laila’s demands are straightforward and entirely reasonable. As Alaa did back in 2014, she is simply asking the Egyptian and British governments to respect their own laws and obligations.
But hunger strikes are grave undertakings. In a quiet conversation during one of our vigils, Laila told me she is doing this because she is convinced the only way she can get the British and Egyptian leaders to act is to precipitate a crisis.
“I am not suicidal,” she said. “More than anything, I want to see Alaa again, free and with his own son [also in the UK]. But I also know I must be prepared to keep going to the end if that is what it takes. I have had a good life, and I want him and his sister, who has given up everything to campaign for him, to have their lives back too.”
That conviction is something Britain’s most famous hunger striker, Bobby Sands, would have recognised. The Irish nationalist died in 1981 after refusing food for 66 days to demand that he and his fellow republican detainees be allowed to wear their own clothes, get regular visits and mail, and be treated as political prisoners rather than common criminals. (Sands, whose last days were dramatised in the Steve McQueen film Hunger, consumed only water, unlike Laila who is also taking electrolytes and salt – both necessary for vital organ functions.)
In the 2008 Steve McQueen movie Hunger about Sands’s last days, Father Dominic Moran pays him a visit. The priest says: “You start a hunger strike to protest for what you believe in. You don’t start already determined to die. Or am I missing something here?”
“It’s in their hands,” Sands replies. “Our message is clear. They’re seeing our determination … Putting my life on the line, Dom, is not just the only thing I can do. It’s the right thing.” Nine more hunger strikers would die before the government granted their demands to the remaining prisoners.
Laila’s unyielding love for her children and for justice is her driving force. She is now weak, and her vital signs are well into the danger zone, but she is as determined as Sands and as convinced of the legitimacy of her campaign. She also believes it will be successful, if not before she dies, then perhaps because of the outrage that must inevitably follow.
And that may be the final lesson in strikes: a clear-headed, unwavering sense of purpose. As Sands says in Hunger: “I have my belief. And in all its simplicity, that is the most powerful thing.”
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Peter Greste is a professor of journalism at Macquarie University and the executive director of the Alliance for Journalists’ Freedom. He was imprisoned in Egypt in 2013 on terrorism charges while reporting for Al Jazeera and released after 400 days. He has just ended his 21-day hunger strike in support of Alaa
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