Currently at Guantanamo Bay, 43 of the 166 prisoners are on hunger strikes, in protest of the what they perceive to be the unethical conditions at the facility and their indefinite detention without trial. Carol Rosenberg, Correspondent for the Miami Herald, breaks down the report.
The hunger strike at Guantanamo Bay is just the latest use of a protest technique that has been adopted by activists of all stripes, all around the world. Mahatma Gandhi might be the most famous and successful participant of a hunger strike, contributing to the independence of India from colonial Britain.
And then there were those less successful hunger strikes. In Ireland in 1980, 10 young men died during a hunger strike that Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher refused to negotiate with.
Sharman Apt Russell, Professor of writing at Western New Mexico State University, discusses the history of hunger strikes.