Sunday, August 14, 2016

What does a 16-year hunger strike do to your body?

On Tuesday , Irom "Mengoubi" Chanu Sharmila of Manipur in northeast India ended her nearly 16-year hunger strike by licking a smudge of honey off of her hand. The 44-year-old began her strike 5,757 days prior, following the November 2000 Malom Massacre , wherein men from the Assam Rifles paramilitary force killed ten civilians at a bus stop near the regional capital of Imphal and faced no consequences. Sharmila aimed to force the repeal of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act , which grants armed forces legal impunity and broad authority to violate civil rights in the name of "security." The AFSPA still stands in India, but Sharmila's fortitude earned her a 2005 Nobel peace prize nomination and a moniker: The Iron Lady of Manipur.

In the days since she called off her strike, most have focused on what comes next for Sharmila, who spent most of the last 16 years relatively isolated in police custody at Imphal's Jawaharlal Nehru Hospital—ironically, named after the Prime Minister whose government passed the AFSPA. Despite India's tradition of hunger strike activism , authorities labeled Sharmila's a possible illegal suicide attempt and forced her to reaffirm her strike periodically to re-arrest her on new charges, circumventing a law against holding a prisoner before trial for over a year.

Sharmila was released on $149 bail when she announced the end of her strike, and since then there's been little information explaining how she managed to survive such a long hunger strike, as well as what effects the strike could have on her long-term health; she was turned away from an ashram where she wanted to live post-strike because of their concern that they couldn't offer her proper medical care. Full story...

Related posts:
  1. Irom Sharmila: What's next for world's longest hunger striker?
  2. India: Irom Sharmila explains her hunger strike...
  3. To attain salvation, more Jains in India are fasting to death...
  4. Fasting for three days can regenerate entire immune system, study finds...

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