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 one of her classes from Zhang Boli, a visiting writer at Peking University. Zhang said that he was inspired by Gandhi. In addition, she was told a story by two men from the national security force on April 27 about a single hunger striker, who was easily chased away on April 19. Some student leaders heard about the idea as early as April 23 from Hong Kong students, who proposed a hunger strike. Student leaders like Wu'er Kaixi believed it was a good idea, but students like Li Jinjin, a master's student from Peking University's Beijing Students' Autonomous Federation, believed