Hunger Strike
The 1981 Irish hunger strike started with Sands refusing food on 1 March 1981. Sands decided that other prisoners should join the strike at staggered intervals in order to maximise publicity with prisoners steadily deteriorating successively over several months.
The hunger strike centred on five demands:
- the right not to wear a prison uniform;
- the right not to do prison work;
- the right of free association with other prisoners, and to organise educational and recreational pursuits;
- the right to one visit, one letter and one parcel per week;
- full restoration of remission lost through the protest.
The significance of the hunger strike was the prisoners' aim of being declared political prisoners (or prisoners of war) as opposed to criminals. The Washington Post, reported that the primary aim of the hunger strike was to generate international publicity.
Read more about this topic: Bobby Sands
Famous quotes containing the words hunger and/or strike:
“Pain and fear and hunger are effects of causes which can be foreseen and known: but sorrow is a debt which someone else makes for us.”
—Freya Stark (1893–1993)
“Is this then a touch? quivering me to a new identity,
Flames and ether making a rush for my veins,
Treacherous tip of me reaching and crowding to help them,
My flesh and blood playing out lightning to strike what is hardly
different from myself,
On all sides prurient provokers stiffening my limbs,”
—Walt Whitman (1819–1892)