The loss of life this week of a Palestinian prisoner, Khader Adnan, who starved himself in Israel to protest his detention, threw a highlight on a technique of nonviolent resistance, a part of a historical past of protest that turns the captive’s physique right into a instrument to realize change.
As a tactic of activism, it was used most famously by Mohandas Okay. Gandhi, who staged a number of starvation strikes whereas main India’s wrestle for independence from Britain. Detainees all over the world have refused meals to name consideration to an array of causes, starting from opposing dictatorships to bettering circumstances in prisons the place they’re held.
Here’s a take a look at starvation strikes in historical past.
Is it uncommon for a prisoner to die throughout a starvation strike?
Hunger strikes can prolong for months, with some prisoners refusing all nourishment besides water, whereas others have allowed themselves small quantities of sugar and salt. In some instances, the authorities have intervened by force-feeding prisoners.
While prisoners can typically grow to be gravely unwell from prolonged protests, it’s not frequent for starvation strike to lead to loss of life. Here are a couple of:
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In 2020, Moustafa Kassem, a twin Egyptian-American citizen from New York, died of hunger after he was imprisoned in Egypt for six years. He was arrested in Cairo in August 2013 throughout a bloody crackdown following the navy takeover that dropped at energy Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, then a military common and now the president of Egypt.
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In Cuba, Orlando Zapata Tamayo, starved himself to loss of life in 2006 to protest jail circumstances.
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Bobby Sands, a Provisional Irish Republican Army member, was elected to the British Parliament in 1981 whereas on a starvation strike in a jail in Northern Ireland, and died after not consuming for 66 days. Two dozen republican inmates in the identical jail took half in starvation strikes that yr, together with 10 who died.
How is force-feeding starvation strikers seen?
The authorities are usually desperate to quash any potential fallout from prisoners’ dying and detest the spectacle that starvation strikes can create. They generally resort to force-feeding, although for greater than a century there was a vigorous debate in regards to the ethics of the observe.
International teams just like the United Nations, the International Red Cross and the World Medical Association have lengthy acknowledged the suitable of prisoners to refuse meals. Force-feeding starvation strikers, normally finished by inserting a tube by the nostril or mouth and all the way down to the abdomen, has been known as “cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment” by the United Nations particular rapporteur on torture and unwell remedy. And it has been labeled “a form of torture and is contrary to medical ethics,” based on the World Medical Association.
Despite these objections, the U.S. navy has force-fed prisoners on starvation strikes at Guantánamo Bay, saying that it had no different alternative however to maintain them alive, and none have starved. As many as 200 prisoners there — greater than a 3rd of the camp — went on starvation strike in 2005 to protest circumstances and their extended confinement with out trial, and lots of have been force-fed.
In 2015, Israel’s Parliament handed a legislation permitting the authorities to force-feed prisoners in excessive circumstances — over the protests of the nation’s medical affiliation, which has condemned the observe.
In Germany within the Eighties, the federal government force-fed a number of imprisoned members of the Red Army Faction, which was accountable for a string of terrorist assaults within the nation.
Force-feeding turned a global controversy when the British authorities used the observe, beginning in 1909, on imprisoned suffragists who have been on starvation strikes. One of them, Mary Jane Clarke, died two days after her launch from jail, and her allies blamed her loss of life on her remedy there. The outcry over the force-feeding of suffragists prompted a change in British legislation in 1913.
Some girls campaigning for the vote within the United States have been subjected to the identical remedy in 1917.
Who phases starvation strikes, and why?
The strikes are almost at all times carried out by individuals, whether or not imprisoned or free, who say they’re combating in opposition to oppression, in an try to attract consideration to a trigger.
Mr. Adnan, the Palestinian prisoner, was protesting Israel’s observe of holding individuals in administrative detention with out submitting costs or revealing what proof there’s in opposition to them.
In August 2021, the imprisoned Russian opposition chief Aleksei A. Navalny ended a three-week starvation strike whereas serving a jail sentence of greater than two years. His objective was to demand that his docs are likely to well being issues which may have resulted from his poisoning with a chemical weapon.
Cesar Chavez, the labor chief, went on a number of prolonged fasts over his lengthy profession, the final time for 36 days in 1988, to protest the remedy of farm staff within the United States.
Irish individuals who have been imprisoned for opposing British rule staged starvation strikes within the years earlier than independence within the early Twenties. Irish republicans revived the observe in Northern Ireland within the Seventies.
Mr. Sands, the Provisional Irish Republican Army member, and his fellow inmates have been combating to wrest management of Northern Ireland from Britain, however extra instantly, their starvation strike was to demand higher remedy in jail and recognition of them as political prisoners, not frequent criminals.
Source: www.nytimes.com