POLITICO
Martyrdom helped the Irish gain independence. It may not work the same way in Putin’s Russia.
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Alexei Navalny’s hunger strike in a penal colony to the east of Moscow has a particular resonance in Ireland, where the hunger strike has played a role in politics, both national and local, from the mists of the country’s pre-Christian Celtic culture up to the 1980s, when Bobby Sands, a republican prisoner and member of the British Parliament, died after a 66-day fast in a Northern Ireland prison.
Navalny and Sands have different demands, but their methods are similar. What the two have in common is their use of a tactic that has shown in the past to be exceptionally effective at bringing attention to political causes. In Ireland hunger strikes have met with success through the creation of political martyrs; it remains to be seen if the same will be true for Navalny.