Room 14: A World Without Prisons Global Abolition & Palestinian Liberation

Join us on Tuesday 12th of August to hear from Chandrima (ROT Collective, South Asians for Palestine), Asim Qureshi (Cage International) & Kelsey (Cradle Community) in conversation with Hazem Jamjoum (Safarjal Press), exploring the connections linking local and global movements for prison Abolition, through the lens of the Palestinian struggle for liberation.

Together, they will explore how abolitionist frameworks challenge not only prisons and police but the broader structures that uphold systemic violence, from Palestine to Kashmir to Britain, and share perspectives on community-based and political responses to building a world without prisons.

Kelsey works with the Cradle Community, an abolitionist collective made up of people radicalised by our shared experiences of gender and racial marginalisation. Cradle is committed to building towards our collective liberation by experimenting with transformative justice approaches to conflict, harm and accountability.

Chandrima is part of the ROT Collective, a member group of South Asians for Palestine. The ROT (Revolt, Organise, Transform) Collective is a radical South Asian Collective creating space for resistance, solidarity and transformation. The South Asians for Palestine coalition was formed in 2023 to draw together South Asian-led groups in Britain in solidarity with the Palestine national liberation struggle. In addition to the ROT Collective, it comprises: Nijjor Manush, South Asia Solidarity Group, Peace in India and South Asian Liberation Movement.

Dr Asim Qureshi [X: @AsimCP | Insta: @asimqcageint] graduated in Law (LLB Hons, LLM), specialising in International Law. He completed his Ph.D. in International Conflict Analysis from the University of Kent. He is the Research Director at the advocacy group CAGE International, and since 2003 has specialised in investigating the impact of counterterrorism practices worldwide. He has published a wide range of NGO reports, academic journals and articles. He has written the books Rules of the Game: Detention, Deportation, Disappearance (Hurst, Columbia UP, 2009); A Virtue of Disobedience (Unbound, 2019); the editor of I Refuse to Condemn: Resisting Racism in Times of National Security (Manchester UP, 2020) and When Only God Can See: The Faith of Muslim Political Prisoners (Pluto, 2024). Since 2009, he has been advising legal teams involved in defending terrorism trials in the US and at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Since its establishment in 2003, CAGE International has been one of the most reliable sources of information on the status and whereabouts of prisoners seized under the war on terror. Since 2013. CAGE has expended its remit to confront other rule of law abuses taking place under UK counter-terrorism strategy.

Hazem Jamjoum is an editor and translator currently residing in London. He is the editorial lead at Safarjal Press (@safarjalpress), and a member of the curatorial committee behind the Room 14: Artworks from the Political Prisoners’ Movement exhibition. 

Room 14: Artworks from the Palestinian Prisoners' Movement is a multidisciplinary exhibition of works by artist Alaziz Atef and the Palestinian Prisoners' Movement with a sound installation by Dirar Kalash.

Exhibition Hours: 11am - 6pm, Wed - Sun, Aug 8 - 16th

Created during Alaziz Atef’s nine-month imprisonment in Israel’s Ofer military prison, these works use paper sourced from the kitchen, pens passed between cells, and coffee rations as pigment.

It may have been Alaziz who put pen and coffee to paper, but it was the prisoners working in concert—drawing from decades of collective work and sacrifice at the heart of the Palestinian prisoners’ movement—that produced them.

These works are presented with “Who would listen, move my vocal cords, and hear me now?”, a sound installation by Dirar Kalash that takes its title from the last will and testament of the martyred political prisoner Kamal Abu Wa'ar.

This work condenses and amplifies sounds from daily life and lived reality by treating such sounds—in form, content, and organic interrelation—as a fundamentally political statement against the normalisation of silence on one hand, and the monotony of ordinary quotidian sounds on the other.

Join us for the closing performance of Room 14 with Maysa Daw on Aug 16th at Studio 12!

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contact: hello@thestudiotwelve.com , books@safarjalpress.com