"In recent years, two hunger strikes by prisoners received extensive international attention, in part because a number of prisoners died during the protests: the 1981 hunger strike by Irish prisoners in Maze prison during which ten prisoners died, and the hunger strike by Turkish political prisoners in the summer of 1996 during which at least twelve prisoners died and numerous others suffered neurological and psychiatric problems. When the ICRC visited Maze prison in Ulster, the ICRC team members became very concerned despite the fact that, unlike at Guantánamo, medical personnel were authorized to see the hunger strikers and permitted to maintain close communication with the prisoners’ families: “‘[O]utside intervention’ was totally unacceptable in the (northern) Irish hunger strikes of 1980 and 1981. Although the ICRC sent a team with a medical doctor to see the fasting prisoners (as was widely reported in the press at the time), the hunger strikers in this case refused to accept any outside medical mediation. As soon became clear, the hunger strikes in Ulster were deadly serious, with a total of ten prisoners dying over several months. The prison doctors respected the expressed will of the hunger strikers, and force-feeding was not envisaged at any time. (This position based on respect for a patient’s integrity and his right to refuse treatment, was the exact opposite of the attitude held earlier in the century, when political hunger strikers were force-fed by court order in 1909). In the Irish strike, the prisoners’ families were very much involved and communicated with the prison doctors. In a few cases, it was the families of prisoners who asked doctors to intervene at an advanced stage to save their sons’ lives, a request that was complied with. The bottom line in the doctors’ position was that a prisoner’s express will (not to be nourished) would be respected as long as he was fit to decide, but that families could obtain medical assistance for their fasting relatives if [the prisoners] were no longer in a position to express refusal. (This sometimes led to bitter arguments, with some hunger strikers telling their families they would never forgive them if they broke the strike by asking for medical assistance on their behalf. Most families, in fact, supported their sons or husbands on the strike.)"