Hunger Strikes as Commemorative Performance in Myanmar

This paper adds to the literature considering hunger strikes as performances of resistance. It presents the action of political fasting not merely as a form of protest, but also as a strategy for building a collective identity and commemorating past protest events. To do so, it leverages a case study on Myanmar under both colonial and military rule. There is a rich, yet understudied, history of hunger strikes in Myanmar, from the monk U Wizaya who died in jail in 1929 after 166 days of fasting to Aung San Suu Kyi refusing food when first placed under house arrest in 1989. The paper combines archival sources from the India and Burma Office records with interviews of Burmese activists and former political prisoners who fasted while in jail, or during protest events. It shows how hunger striking has long been construed in Myanmar as a collective form of protest against colonialism, military rule, but also a tool for mobilizing for statehood recognition and the defense of religion. The ethnographic data collected, however, suggest that despite occupying a prominent place in Myanmar’s contentious repertoire, hunger striking remains a contested tactic. Rejecting the ‘strike-to-death’ form of political fasting, some Burmese dissidents have instead performed short-term, non-life-threatening hunger strikes to show solidarity with jailed or deceased comrades and commemorate past historical struggles. The paper will conclude with remarks on the effectiveness of such protest strategies in Myanmar’s post-coup context.