Hunger strike time, instead of many prisoners striking at the same time, the hunger strikers started fasting one after the other in order to maximise publicity over the fate of each one. Bobby Sands was the first of ten republican paramilitary prisoners to die during a hunger strike in 1981. There was widespread sympathy for the hunger strikers from Irish republicans and the broader nationalist community on both sides of the Irish border. Bobby Sands was elected as an MP to the UK's Houses of Parliament and two other hunger strikers, Paddy Agnew and Kieran Doherty, were elected to Dáil Éireann in
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