In prison, Alaa taught me the power of this form of resistance. His mother, Laila Soueif, and I have used it to challenge Downing Street

Alaa Abd el-Fattah knows about hunger strikes. When I was locked up in a cell next to him in Cairo’s notorious Tora prison in early 2014, he and I would stride the exercise yard discussing Egyptian politics, history, political reform, and – yes – forms of protest and resistance, including starving yourself.

Hunger strikes, he explained, are the ultimate tool of the powerless. When all other forms of agency are stripped away, all that remains is to exercise control over the one thing left: your own body. That would become my first lesson in strikes.

This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.