HM Prison Maze However, the government immediately reverted to their previous stance, in the belief that the prisoners would not start another strike. Bobby Sands, the leader of the Provisional IRA prisoners, began a second action on 1 March 1981. Outside the prison, in a major publicity coup, Sands was nominated for Parliament and won the Fermanagh and South Tyrone by-election. But the British government still resisted and on 5 May, after 66 days on hunger strike, Sands died. More than 100,000 people attended Sands' funeral in Belfast. Another nine hunger strikers (members of both the IRA and the INLA) died by the
Students' hunger strike at the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests Gandhi's biography. Chai Ling has a different story: She saw a debate at Peking University as to whether to stage a hunger strike. To gain involvement from students for the hunger strikes, student leaders like Wang Dan went around asking individuals to sign up. This is how Chai Ling joined. Student leaders, who wanted to be part of the strike could only do so independently because the Beijing Students' Autonomous Federation did not support the hunger strike. By the night before the strike began, 40 individuals had signed up. Chai Ling gave an emotional speech at Peking University to appeal