The hunger strikes enduring power finds new leverage in age of a highly connected world

Hunger strike has enduring power
by Stefan Simanowitz – 30 July, 2012 – Tribune Magazine UK

While the hunger strike may have made its greatest political gains in the 20th century helping to expose injustice, overturn prejudice and even overthrow empires, the recent release of a Palestinian footballer, Mahmoud Sarsak, after a 95-day hunger strike, demonstrates that this ancient form of protest has lost none of its power. Indeed, in the digital age, the hunger strike is finding new influence.

Sarsak’s release followed the release of another Palestinian hunger striker, Khader Adnan, in April, and concessions made by Israel to more than 1,500 Palestinian prison hunger strikers. In May, Bahraini activist Abdulhadi al-Khawaja ended his 110-day hunger strike, having drawn the world’s attention to Bahrain’s anti-government movement. Jailed Ukrainian opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko’s 20-day hunger strike caused an international stir ahead of the Euro 2012 football championships. In Iran, several imprisoned journalists and activists are currently on hunger strike. Last year, veteran activist Hoda Saber died of a heart attack after just 10 days fasting. In Russia the announcement that the three members of the jailed activist punk band Pussy Riot are on hunger strike made headlines around the world.

The internet age provides huge opportunities for the scope and impact of the hunger strike in terms of raising awareness and support. However, with thousands of hunger strikes being staged each month – from Belarus to Tibet, and Western Sahara to Guantanamo Bay – there is also a danger that information about some of them will be lost in cyberspace.

Anyone who has seen Hunger, Alexander McQueen’s 2008 film about the Maze prison hunger strike, will have an idea just how horrific it is to die from starvation. The body literally consumes itself – “mining” its muscles and vital organs for energy. Toxic ketone bodies are produced and death comes by dehydration, atrophication and the failure of the kidneys, liver and other organs.

Unlike self-immolation, a hunger strike can last for weeks or months, slowing reconfiguring the dynamic between the “powerless” and the ‘powerful’. By making public the very private act of dying, the hunger striker demands attention.

While many people think of the hunger strike as a phenomenon of the previous century, employed most famously in the struggles for women’s suffrage and the Irish and Indian independence movement, the practice is rooted far further back in history. Hunger strikes were practiced in medieval Ireland, ancient India and by the Romans. …more