Hunger strike
The refusal of food can from about three to four weeks lead to serious, sometimes permanent health damage or death, see hunger metabolism.
Some hunger-striking people have survived 50 to 70 days. Bobby Sands, a member of the IRA, died during the hunger strikes of 1981 after 66 days. Holger Meins, a member of the Red Army Faction, died after 57 days in 1974.
Occasionally, the hunger strike is broken by gavage using a stomach probe.
1967 Fritz Teufel protested against his arrest by the Shah's visit with a political hunger strike.
The imprisoned members of the extreme left-wing terrorist organization Red Army Faction set from 1972 in West Germany hunger strike massively as a political tool in order to improve their conditions of detention. The justice went on a number of demands, the most important requirement for consolidation of all RAF prisoners but was never implemented. The RAF prisoners led to 1994 by a total of ten collective hunger strikes, the consequences of which two prisoners died. Especially the death of Holger Meins 1974 was designated by the RAF as martyrdom and contributed to the fact that a second generation was born.
The Tübingen teacher Hartmut Gründler sat 1975-1977 multiply the pressure medium of the hunger strike (juice fasting, water fasting ) in order to protest in Wyhl, Tübingen and Kassel against alleged " misinformation " in the nuclear energy policy, especially for final disposal.
In Germany it was in the 1960s in connection with the closure of several coal mines several times to hunger strikes, although provoked extensive media coverage, but the closures could not prevent. The closure of the potash mines of the former GDR was in the 1990s can not be averted by the hunger strike of the miners.