Suicide and Self-starvation
1984; Cambridge University Press; Volume: 59; Issue: 229 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1017/s0031819100069941
ISSN1469-817X
Autores Tópico(s)Irish and British Studies
ResumoA puzzle has been presented in the recent past in Northern Ireland: what is the correct description of the person who dies as a result of a hungerstrike? For many the simple answer is that such a person commits suicide, in that his is surely a case of ‘self-inflicted death’. Where then is the puzzle? It is that a number of people do not see such deaths as suicides. I am not here referring to political propagandists or paramilitaries, for whom the correct description of such deaths is ‘murder by Mrs Thatcher’ or ‘killed by British intransigence’ (to quote advertisements in the Belfast nationalist press at the time of Bobby Sands' death). I am rather thinking of some theologians who, despite being opposed to the hunger-strike and indeed publicly condemning the whole campaign, refused to describe what the hunger-strikers did as suicide.
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