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Hunger Strike, Lip Sewing and Self-harm

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Human Rights, Refugee Protest and Immigration Detention

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Abstract

This chapter draws on cultural studies and semiotics to understand hunger strike, lip sewing and, to a lesser extent, self-harm. Hunger strikers’ testimony is used to argue that hunger strikes were an attempt to reach the conscience of government members and the general public, to embody and make visible the violence of detention, as communicative acts and as attempts to exercise and affirm ones’ own agency. The chapter also discusses other forms of bodily protest such as self-harm and suicide attempts, exploring how detainees used their bodies as sites of control in an environment in which they had very little control.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    A donga is a temporary removable building. Dongas were used extensively in the larger detention centres.

  2. 2.

    The United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention reported that some immigration detainees were transferred to prisons ‘because of a lack of space in the centres’ and found that this practice amounted to arbitrary detention and constituted a breach of the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights (UNWGAD 2002, 14).

  3. 3.

    Refugitive is a play that Shahin wrote and performed after his release from detention to explain hunger strike and self-harm by detainees. For further detail, see Chap.3.

  4. 4.

    Petro Giorgio was a Liberal Party backbencher (retired in 2010) who led a small group of fellow government MPs in challenging the government’s position on asylum seekers. He began speaking publically against the government position, drafted a Private Members Bill to improve the rights of asylum seekers in detention, threatened to cross the floor and vote against the government on a 2006 bill and managed to negotiate with the Prime Minister for significant improvements, particularly getting children out of detention centres and getting a new class of bridging visa introduced to get long term detainees out. Giorgio’s public criticism of the government’s position became a key focal point for changing community attitudes (For more on Giorgio and fellow backbencher dissidents, see Fleay [2010, 121–126]).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Technology Sydney, Sydney, Australia

    Lucy Fiske

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  1. Lucy Fiske
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Fiske, L. (2016). Hunger Strike, Lip Sewing and Self-harm. In: Human Rights, Refugee Protest and Immigration Detention. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-58096-2_5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-58096-2_5

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  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-137-58095-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-137-58096-2

  • eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)

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