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| Hunger Strike victim or X-Ray? |
Hunger
may indicate a personal decision to refrain from eating, such as the religious
practice of fasting during the season of Lent. While not recommended for
children or the elderly, supervised fasting is a safe and acceptable custom.
Anorexia and bulimia, not so much.
More
deadly is the ritualized hunger strike. While the practice itself is not a
crime, often the undertaking of a hunger strike is prompted by criminal action.
Just as Buddhists protested unfair edicts in 1963 by drenching themselves with
gasoline and setting themselves ablaze, people who refuse food also risk a
painful death.
A
notable hunger strike that ended very badly took place in Ireland’s Long Kesh
Prison, during the summer of 1981. It is not my intent to assign responsibility
for the deaths that occurred or to judge peers and superiors who allowed the
strikes to commence or persist. You can draw your own conclusions from reading Afterlives, The Hunger Strike and the Secret
Offer That Changed Irish History by Richard O’Rawe.
Fasting;
hunger strike; keeping fast; Lenten fast; without food; and strict fast; all
fall under the heading of Xerophagy.
The
axiom:
“Guns don’t kill people, people kill people”
doesn’t apply only to
firearms.
