I been in the right place
But it must have been the wrong time

                  Dr. John – “Right Place, Wrong Time”

I’m working hard at finding the sympathetic path toward the outbreak of “hunger strikes” currently en vogue in Armenia.

Background: The current regime is still oppressing, imprisoning and generally making life unpleasant for significants who were on the wrong side of last February’s crooked presidential election. There are bastards on both sides, deserving of whatever they get. Only this is universal: There are men in jail who shouldn’t be, and men free and in force who are more at guilt than the detained for crimes against the state.

So: Members of the opposition and most recently including war veterans – “freedom fighters” as they like to be called – have sworn off food. Sort of. They’ve vowed to not eat for three days. In fact, their “hunger strikes” are more like fasts, but I guess “freedom fast” just doesn’t have the same public appeal as “hunger strike”.

God bless the participants, for their cause is just. But in terms of garnering widespread public support or even international attention, their methodology is, well, kind of silly.

Who ever heard of staging a “rotating” hunger strike? Yep, three days at a time, activists are going without food, tag-teamed by other activists who will take up their own three-day vigil.

Only in Armenia could three days of not eating be called a “strike”. In many countries, in fact, it’s called a healthy practice – a weekend fast to purge the system, de-tox. But those countries likely do not know the gastronomical joys of khoravats, of dolma, of Lori cheese on fresh apricots or tomatoes like apples from heaven . . .

The most prominent strike is taking place in a cemetery. Show me one that lasts on Proshian’s “barbecue street” and then we’ll know they’re serious. Anyway:

Methodology aside, the hunger strike concept leaves me a little empty, even when traditionally administered.

In the early 1980s, Ireland’s Bobby Sands became a hero to many of us, when he starved himself to death in a British prison protest. He was the first of several Irish “freedom fighters” to starve themselves to death while British Prime Minister Maggie Thatcher watched. Sands’ heroic protest drew international attention (long before the media accessibility of today).

Bobby Sands died. Britain still governs Northern Ireland.

Bobby’s slow suicide lasted 66 days. By comparison, the boys at Yerablur are hardly missing a snack. The Armenian protestors are a little behind on the times if they think three foodless days is going to turn heads and opinion.

That aside: Who cares? Has it occurred to anyone that if authorities here are willing to unjustly put dozens in prison they aren’t likely to be moved to repentance because a few people take a three-day vow to not eat?

When Serzh Sargsyan sits down to a presidential steak or a bowl of caviar is he going to wonder what’s on the menu in the graveyard?

People’s Party of Armenia member Ruzan Khachatryan is right when she questions the effectiveness of the hunger strike. But she is wrong in saying that it is useless because Armenia is not a democratic country.

It is useless because, like too much of what Armenia’s opposition has tried in the past decade, it is ill-conceived and out of touch. Ultimately it serves to make the anti-government sympathizers look desperate, and much weaker than they’d be from merely three days of not eating.