I met Amu Gib in 2015 at SOAS, a public university affiliated with the University of London. They (Amu’s pronoun) were one of the leaders of a campaign to end the mistreatment of outsourced cleaning staff at the university. Other university workers who were employed directly by SOAS were treated much better: They received higher wages, had access to certain benefits and job security, and had formal recourse when mistreated.
Yet, because the cleaners worked for a contracted company, the university could feign ignorance and wash its hands of this exploitation and abuse. I recall Amu’s dedication to fighting alongside the cleaners, Amu’s genuine concern for their well-being, and how Amu was willing to risk their own privileged position as a student at SOAS to bring about change. In 2016, after graduating from SOAS and moving to New York to study further at Columbia University, I lost touch with Amu.
Distance has a way of doing that: Despite the ease of electronic communication, it remains difficult to maintain active friendships across borders. I was, therefore, only somewhat surprised to hear that Amu had been arrested along with dozens of other activists for allegedly destroying military hardware used by Israel in its genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. I say somewhat surprised, because I know Amu to be someone who cares deeply about the lives of others, and that they are the type of person willing to risk their own life to oppose genocide.
Read Full Article on Mail & Guardian
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The property destruction that Amu is alleged to have committed at the Royal Air Force (RAF) Brize Norton in Oxfordshire, as well as the destruction by other activists of Elbit Systems’ drones at its factory in Bristol, is claimed by the civil disobedience group Palestine Action. On 5 July 2025, after the above operations, Palestine Action was labelled a terrorist organisation by the British government and thereafter proscribed. This means that anyone associated with the group is now considered a terrorist by the state.
This also means that Amu and dozens of other activists, who have probably never touched a gun in their lives, are being treated as terrorists, simply for taking action to stop (or limit) Israeli state terror against Palestinians. As a result, they have been denied bail and held on remand for months while awaiting trial. Proscription means that the legal right to the presumption of innocence until proven guilty simply does not apply.
It also means that while in British prisons, they have been treated even worse than regular inmates, regularly punished for contrived infractions, and censored from communicating freely with friends and family outside. Their rights over their own bodies have been taken away from them, with almost every aspect of their life under constant surveillance and control.
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