World's longest running hunger striker - Irom Sharmila
Irom Sharmila has not eaten a meal for more than 12 years. Her hunger strike, aimed at stopping the bloody conflict between militants and the state, is the world’s longest.
The 41-year-old started her fast on 3 November 2000, a day after 10 people, waiting at a bus stop in the town of Malom, Manipur, were shot dead by paramilitary forces.
Ms Sharmila, the youngest of five brothers and four sisters, was deeply disturbed by the killings. The following day she spoke with her mother and – having asked for her blessing – announced that she was launching a fast.
Three days after she began her strike, she was arrested by the police and charged with an "attempt to commit suicide", which is unlawful under section 309 of the Indian Penal Code, and was later transferred to judicial custody. Her health deteriorated rapidly, and the police then forcibly had to use nasogastric intubation in order to keep her alive while under arrest. Since then, Irom Sharmila has been regularly released and re-arrested every year since under IPC section 309, a person who "attempts to commit suicide" is punishable "with simple imprisonment for a term which may extend to one year.
Three times a day, for 12 years, nurses have poured a liquefied mixture of vitamins, carbohydrates, proteins and laxatives into a plastic feeding-tube through her nose. Her hospital ward has been converted into a jail.
Her fast has caused her to stop menstruating, while some reports say her internal organs have been damaged.
Ms Sharmila’s hope is to get the government to repeal the Armed Forces Special Powers Act, a draconian piece of legislation that the federal authorities started applying to India’s seven “disturbed” north-eastern states in 1958. The act gives the armed forces the right to arrest people and enter any building without a warrant and “fire upon or otherwise use force, even to the causing of death, against any person who is acting in contravention of any law”.
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