A hunger strike is a method of non-violent resistance in which participants fast as an act of political protest or to achieve a goal such as a policy change.
Mohandas Gandhi engaged in two famous hunger strikes. The first protested British rule of India; the second, autocratic rule in the newly self-governed India.
Bobby Sands was one of ten Irish nationalist paramilitary prisoners who died due to a hunger strike in 1981. This hunger strike was a protest against the revocation by the British of a prisoner of war-like Special Category Status for paramilitary-linked prisoners held in Northern Ireland.
In recent years, many Kurdish separatists in Turkish jails have died on hunger strike.
