The pain of a hunger strike
By Tadesse Sintayehu
Dec 28, 2005 — It is surprising that many people don’t comprehend the psychological and physical effects of a hunger strike. They seem to compare it to fasting where one could easily forgo food for two, three or even a few more days. Based on my own experience, an extended hunger strike is a very dangerous undertaking. The recent hunger strike by the [opposition] Coalition for Unity and Democracy (CUD) members in prison in Addis Ababa was one such dangerous exercise. Hunger strike by itself may not have been fatal or detrimental to the health of the prisoners if those in power were answerable to higher moral or political imperatives. However, in an environment where the authorities have little or no regard for human life, continuing the hunger strike would have been suicidal. That was why I was immensely relieved when I heard on November 16th that the prisoner-MP’s had listened to the pleading of their supporters and began taking food.
Some thirty-three years ago I was in prison in Sudan. An illegal refugee, with no papers, I was a nobody. I was in Kober, the huge prison in Khartoum. Kober was built by colonial Britain to detain and torture Sudanese nationalists and others who opposed colonial rule. My two Ethiopian friends and I had entered illegally near one of the border crossings in the south and were quickly picked up by the authorities. There we were three young Ethiopians from central Ethiopia joined by five Eritreans from northern Ethiopia. One of the five Eritreans said he was an Ethiopian national and ended up in jail as an Ethiopian according to him and his Sudanese jailors. His name was Asmerom A and he was caught loitering in an army barrack inside the office of the officer-in-charge. The other four Eritreans who were in their late thirties and forties were ELF/EPLF cadres manning offices for different Eritrean groups in Khartoum.
Asmerom was in detention for over two and half years when we joined him in Kober Prison. He was accused of espionage. Our stay in detention was unbelievably humane and civilized. Each detainee was provided with bed, mattress, blanket and two decent meals a day. In the wing holding the political prisoners, there were Sudanese political detainees of various political affiliations. I remember members of the Muslim Brotherhood with their leader Dr. Hassan Al Turabi; his deputy Dr. Burad; young officers of the Communist Party of the Sudan; Mahdists; former officials of the Abud regime; people who called themselves democrats and other intellectuals. There was also an European by the name Steiner, a German/Dutch who was caught fighting alongside the SPLA in Southern Sudan.
The detention center had its own hospital run by Dr. Hashim and his assistant Sadiq. All of us detainees had equal access to this hospital without exception 24 hours a day. The only exception was Steiner who was allowed to have a weekly or by-weekly visit by a European medical professional. All of us were accorded the right to be treated outside the prison hospital when the need arose. I myself was the beneficiary of this service once.
After a few months of detention, eight of us, including our Eritrean friends, agreed to go on a hunger strike to get our message out to the authorities for an immediate release. There was an intense discussion among our Sudanese friends and us. Most of our Sudanese friends thought this was our only weapon to secure our release and get our message out to responsible authorities. Some for theological, philosophical and health reasons felt we shouldn’t go on the hunger strike. This discussion and soul searching went on for a while before we all agreed to embark on the arduous task of going on the hunger strike.
I remember it was the holy month of Ramadan when we started our hunger strike. None of us had the experience of going through this painful process and its challenge. And none of us knew how it would end. But we trusted the support of our Sudanese friends who advised us. Even though our Muslim Brother friends had some misgivings about the exercise, they were supportive of us once we started our hunger strike.
If my memory serves me well the first twenty-four hours of the hunger strike was common hunger and craving for coffee, tea. cigarettes, etc. This was followed by a terrible headache into the third day. After the third day was over, the common hunger began to take its toll, followed by headache, replaced with an excruciating pain all over the joints, followed by a nagging back pain. At this stage you don’t feel any hunger or headache at all – you feel pain, pain all over the muscles and joints. Our experience by no means has any comparison to what the CUD MP’s recently went through in Ethiopia. It is natural every person acts differently to any event including this self imposed punishment as a form of protest.
By the end of the third day one of our Eritrean colleagues collapsed and he was taken to the hospital for immediate treatment. On our fourth day of the hunger strike one caring Muslim Brotherhood doctor in the detention center came to us and clearly explained to us the danger and the impact of a hunger strike now and in the future such as damage to liver, kidney, heart and other major organs including irreversible damage to our brain.
On day five one of our Ethiopian friends succumbed and he was treated with Intervenes liquid, even though he was not willing to be treated he was manhandled into accepting it. I remember the good old Mr. Sadiq forcefully twisting his arm to administer the injection to save this foreigner who didn’t even speak his language nor practiced his religion. It was purely compassion and respect for another human being. The prison doctors monitored our health twice daily and reported our status to the prison Commissioner and then to the Minister of Interior, Mr. Kalifa Gerar.
On day seven of our hunger strike the prison administrator told us that Mr. Kalifa Gerar himself will evaluate our circumstance and that we would be released unconditionally. We had no reason not to trust our administrator’s pledge, so we decided to break our fasting. Within two weeks, we were released, including Asmerom A.
As I had then and still now ,and more so now in light of what is going on in Ethiopia, wonder why these people cared for us? Who are we? We were foreigners/habashas who illegally entered their country, Some of us were high school dropouts, maybe someone committed espionage, some of us have had only an elementary education. Most of us wouldn’t merit any consideration by any measure except being human beings who deserved humane treatment. It is beyond me, why it is then that the present rulers in Ethiopia who themselves were the beneficiaries of the Sudanese generosity – freedom of movement, freedom of speech, decent treatment, overall respect as human beings, etc. didn’t acquire any of these virtues accorded to them.
I thought and still think that it is always human to share whatever good is received should be passed along to others. I, like many other Ethiopians, am grateful and indebted to the people of the Sudan for their humane treatment and for allowing me to have a positive reflection of my first and last hunger strike. I felt I was totally innocent and their humanity allowed them to hear my plea.
But what pains me deeply when I write my experience of a hunger strike is the thought of my fellow Ethiopians whose contributions to society I know and have read and who have been struggling selflessly for a better civil society, democratic rule, human rights, the rule of law, are incarnated on trumped-up charges and had to go through an excoriating huger strike and no body had the decency or humanity to hear their plea.
I am sad and angry that the torment of these teachers, scholars, mentors and leaders is so callous and vindictive. Having a different political view is neither a crime nor genocide. It is only in the sick mind of the jailers to accuse a lawyer who tried the perpetrators of genocide in Rwanda with genocide; an engineer and economist for destroying public property; a judge for breaking the rule of law; a human rights advocate for violating another person’s human right. And imagine also of accusations of other fathers, scholars, teachers and their students of a fictitious treason.
All I have to say to all of you whom I have met in person and to those I have read and learned from your work through your writing and teaching is that I understand your pain and my heart ached for you because I myself had been there, though for a short time and in a very conducive environment where humans treat others humanely. I know that when we went on a hunger strike thirty-three years ago most of us were half your age and in good health and our prison condition and the compassion we got from the humane authorities was very different from the way you are being abused by shuttling you from prison to court to prison and back to court again. Your situation in your own country at the hands of your own countrymen, some of whom you know or may even had taught in school, is cruel and inhuman.
I for one, along with my family, will always remember you in my prayers. I will also keep asking why the world keeps looking the other way when the human rights of not only you, but millions of Ethiopians is being abused by a handful of dictators who answer neither to God (they are atheists), religious or civic leaders, morality, international opinion nor to the rule of law. Perhaps the cruelty and inhuman treatment of the prisoners and the people in general is the result of the leaders fearing no one, including God. How else to explain the repeated massive and indiscriminate crackdown, killings, beatings and torture of the defenseless population by the security forces.
The silence of the civilized world also reminds me of the experience of the Catholic Priest during World War II who is reported to have said, “the Nazis first came to get the Jews, I kept silent since I was not a Jew; then they came to get the Communists, I kept my silence since I was not a Communist; then they came to get my neighbor, I still kept my silence; then they came to get me, and I looked around, but by then nobody was there.”
Try if you will to think of those who have been fasting for their freedom. Can you forgo a coffee, orange juice, an ice cream, a whole meal, or three not just for a day. But for weeks on end. while being mentally and physically abused by cruel jailors. That is the cruel reality in today’s Ethiopia.
My God blesses you with unlimited endurance and health.
May God bless Ethiopia since it is home for millions in distress.
May God bless the Sudan for treating most us with respect and dignity.
May God bless America with its shortcomings for being our second home.
* Tadesse Sintayehu was a former prisoner in the Sudan, he is currently based in the USA.