A “Global Hunger Strike”?
Commonly understood, “hunger strikes” are intended as a form of non-violent action, a voluntary fast with an intended political or human rights aim. Yet I confess to being puzzled by recent, more casual, deployments of the “hunger strike” as a political tool. I apologize in advance if this suggestion seems far too cynical, even Thatcher-esque.”
I don’t have a set thesis here, rather a working question, for which I will be interested to learn the thoughts of jwn readers. My question is prompted by the pending 3 day “global hunger strike” to take place on July 14-16. Orchestrated by prominet Iranian dissident Akbar Ganji, these “global hunger strikers” are demanding that the Iranian authorities release all political prisoners held inside Iran, including former MP Ali Akbar Mousavi Khoeni, Professor Ramin Jahanbegloo and labor leader Mansour Osanloo.
I hasten to insert here that I mean no disrespect for the plight of these and others suffering in prisons for their political beliefs. Yet I am wondering if the short term “strikes” being organized on their behalf, by those not in prison, should really be called a “hunger strike.”
Maybe I am splitting too fine a hair here. Yet to me, the “hunger striker” brings to mind those figures in history who not just threatened, but in many cases actually did lay down their lives, via self-starvation, for a political cause. Prominent “hunger strikers” have been with us on the international stage at least for a full century, dating to Marion Dunlop and the British suffragettes, followed by Irish Republicans amid their war for independence from Britain.
Later, of course, we have the seminal examples of India’s Mahatma Gandhi and the Irish Republican Army’s Bobby Sands. The former galvanized global opinion with his hunger strikes against British rule and then later against perceived injustices in the new independent India.
Sands “struck” for better prison conditions and for recognition by Britain that he and his fellow IRA dissidents were political prisoners. British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, the “Iron Lady,” essentially refused to budge. Nor did Sands and nine of his colleagues; they starved to death for their cause. As an ironic side note, revolutionary Iran renamed the street in front of the British Embassy in Tehran after Bobby Sands.
In the same tradition as Sands, prominent dissidents have gone on extended, life-threatening hunger strikes in such diverse places as the former Soviet Union, apartheid South Africa, Turkey, Iran, and, yes, “Gitmo.” Akbar Ganji himself went on a six week hunger strike last summer, one that drew extensive international attention to his plight and pressure for his release. Ganji was released this past March.
The common thread among hunger strikers of course is the effort to attain international pressure in support of their grievances against their captors. Those governments in turn usually are loathe to let their prisoners starve themselves to death resulting all too often in the brutal, sadistic, and often fatal practice of forced feeding. Horrifically (to me anyway), we’ve recently been treated to Bush Administration lawyers defending the very same practices once used in the Soviet Gulag – a spade incisively so labelled by former Soviet human rights activitist and hunger striker, Vladimir Bukovsky.
Maybe I’ve missed a change in how “hunger strikes” are now used. Yet something seems rather different when we have a “global hunger strike” organized to last for just 3 days, even as it may be by many distinguished persons genuinely worried about a perceived deteriorating human rights situation in Iran.
I no doubt could benefit from a good 3 day fast. But would I be really sacrificing something serious enough to draw attention to a bigger cause? Why should Iran take a “3 day hunger strike” seriously? What if they don’t submit to all demands and release all un-named “political prisoners” by the third day? What then? Or is the objective here something other than that so stated?
This oddly reminds me of what Reza Pahlavi, the son of the last Iranian Shah did in June 2005. Just before the Iranian Presidential elections, and with much fanfare, the son-of-Shah proclaimed that he too would be going on a “hunger strike” – for three days – in support of political prisoners and to draw attention to his call for the Iranian people to boycott what he deemed the “theatrics” of Iran’s “sham” Presidential elections.
In the process, the would-be Shah created his own theatre of the absurd… No doubt the staged appearances around California to “demonstrate” his “hunger” for his people’s welfare were impressive. Please. I don’t recall any reports of Iranians boycotting the elections either.
But I digress. My thoughts are mixed on this subject. I well recognize the human rights concerns involved here, and I can understand why many genuinely concerned individuals will be drawn to the idea of a limited “fast” on behalf of those deemed to be suffering unjustly. Its non-violent, its principled, and it would only cost you 3 (unmonitored) days of “hungering for righteousness sake.” And somebody else will do all the publicity and handle the media. (!?)
Yet something seems diluted, even cheapened, here to me; neither Gandhi nor “Ganji.” Instead of a “global hunger strike,” maybe we should instead refer to it as organized “global dieting.”