The Different Kinds of Hunger: Ramadan at Guantanamo
By Sajida Jalalzai. A hunger strike at Guantanamo during Ramadan reveals contradictions about religion, ethics, and prisoners’ rights. Continue Reading →
Tag: hunger strike
The Longest Hunger Strike
By Ann Neumann There are two places in the U.S. where you can be fed against your will: a Catholic hospital and a prison. Continue Reading →
Ramdev's Hunger Strike Media Campaign
Kathryn Montalbano: India, home to the longest-running hunger strike in the world, has a history of starvation as protest, most prominently stemming from the non-violent practices of Mahatma Ghandi who, single-handedly, turned the ubiquitous hunger strike into an Indian-specific political symbol. But contemporary criticism of the use of hunger strikes in India questions the virtuousness of the method, noting how recent protests often implement coercive, sometimes violent means to blackmail governments into compliance.
Subhash Kashyap, former secretary-general of India’s lower house of parliament, claims in an article by Ben Doherty, “Gandhi never fasted on major issues like his country’s independence, or where there was room for difference of opinion. …His hunger strikes were only for causes where there was so obvious a right and wrong ‘that not conceding would be palpably unjust.'” Continue Reading →
Ramdev’s Hunger Strike Media Campaign
Kathryn Montalbano: India, home to the longest-running hunger strike in the world, has a history of starvation as protest, most prominently stemming from the non-violent practices of Mahatma Ghandi who, single-handedly, turned the ubiquitous hunger strike into an Indian-specific political symbol. But contemporary criticism of the use of hunger strikes in India questions the virtuousness of the method, noting how recent protests often implement coercive, sometimes violent means to blackmail governments into compliance.
Subhash Kashyap, former secretary-general of India’s lower house of parliament, claims in an article by Ben Doherty, “Gandhi never fasted on major issues like his country’s independence, or where there was room for difference of opinion. …His hunger strikes were only for causes where there was so obvious a right and wrong ‘that not conceding would be palpably unjust.'” Continue Reading →
Ramdev’s Hunger Strike Media Campaign
Kathryn Montalbano: India, home to the longest-running hunger strike in the world, has a history of starvation as protest, most prominently stemming from the non-violent practices of Mahatma Ghandi who, single-handedly, turned the ubiquitous hunger strike into an Indian-specific political symbol. But contemporary criticism of the use of hunger strikes in India questions the virtuousness of the method, noting how recent protests often implement coercive, sometimes violent means to blackmail governments into compliance.
Subhash Kashyap, former secretary-general of India’s lower house of parliament, claims in an article by Ben Doherty, “Gandhi never fasted on major issues like his country’s independence, or where there was room for difference of opinion. …His hunger strikes were only for causes where there was so obvious a right and wrong ‘that not conceding would be palpably unjust.'” Continue Reading →
May the Truth Force Be With You
India’s yoga guru, Baba Ramdev, is on a hunger strike starting yesterday, along with 100,000 of his followers including some in Houston, Texas (click on the prior link to catch the Houston Chronicle‘s Kate Shellnut comparing Ramdev’s popularity to that of Oprah or Joel Osteen!). He’ll fast to the death, Ramdev says, if he has to. His demands? Continue Reading →
Thirty Years, Bobby Sands
At the end of The Troubles, in the Maze prison in Northern Ireland on March 1st, 1981, the second hunger strike of republican prisoners began with Bobby Sands’ refusal of food. The protesters contested the removal of Special Category Status for prisoners convicted of IRA criminality; Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was determined to not capitulate to their demands.
Sands’ election to the House of Commons on April 9th helped raise awareness of the hunger strike. He died on May 5th at the age of 27 after 66 days without food. Nine more hunger strikers died after him. Protests erupted the world over.
All these years later, with the Queen slated to visit Dublin next month, and impending Northern Ireland Assembly elections scheduled for May 5th, it is feared that there are “as many as 30 distinct groups opposed to the peace process operating across Norther Ireland” and preparing for violence during the month.
Read more here, here and here. Continue Reading →