hunger strike

Part of themotion read: "That this House is concerned that the hunger strike in Turkey by Leyla Guven MP of the People's Democratic Party (HDP) has reached its third month and that she is in a critical condition; notes that her protest has inspired others to hunger strike, including Ilhan Sis in Newport, South Wales, UK who is now on an indefinite hunger strike, and that 156 other Kurds held in Turkish prisons are now also on indefinite hunger strikes."

THIS week I visited Imam Sis, a Newport resident and member of the Kurdish community in Wales, now on week four of an indefinite hunger strike. Kurds have been on hunger strikes, fasts and protests across the world; 200 Kurds marched through Cardiff last weekend.

In Korea's modern history, hunger strikes have been considered a sublime resistance against dictatorship, primarily adopted by democratic activists and religious figures here.

By the beginning of May, the number of strikers decreased to just below 1,000 people, but later said Palestinian sources the number of people joining the hunger strikes have risen by at least 300 since then.

Unlike previous Palestinian hunger strikes, the current strike gained worldwide publicity and was particularly highlighted in an essay by the most prominent prisoner of the Palestinian cause, Marwan Barghouti.

Hundreds of people within and outside prisons in several countries have launched 5-day rotational hunger strikes in solidarity with the prisoners.

The solidarity hunger strikes were launched by groups of prisoners in the Ofer, Negev, Nafha, and Ramon prisons, and would continue in other Israeli prisons, the committee added.

Palestinian detainees have continuously resorted to open-ended hunger strikes as a way to protest their illegal administrative detention and to demand an end to this policy, which violates international law.

Reading Thomas Hennessey's intense look at the stand-off between the "Iron Lady" Margaret Thatcher and the equally iron will of the Irish Republican prisoners during the 1980-81 hunger strikes is like eavesdropping on a series of private (and not so private) conversations among politicians, paramilitaries, public servants, priests and parents.

Amid continued denial of fair trials and the absence of humane conditions in Egyptian prisons, tens of political prisoners are staging hunger strikes in order to deliver their message, the organisation said.

"We remain concerned for Sotoudeh's well-being given Iran's history of withholding treatment from prisoners and allowing them to die from hunger strikes," Nuland said.