CAIRO — “I am not afraid of death lurking around me. I want to live, but I want to live free or die free, even if I had to lose my life in return for freedom,” read a letter from Mohammed Sultan, who has been on a hunger strike for 10 months. Security forces stormed his home and arrested him Aug. 25, 2013. They had been searching for his father, a Muslim Brotherhood leader.

Sultan is one of the many political detainees who went on hunger strike in protest of several security practices against them in prisons, and their continued incarceration without clear charges or a fair trial. This is how the “Empty Stomachs” battle started between detainees and security authorities who do not want to admit or document cases of hunger strike, which are not recognized by the constitution nor by Egyptian law.

Since the beginning of September 2014, groups of political activists in the Alumni Club of Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies (CIHRS) organized performances to tell the stories of detainees on hunger strikes, and published their letters in solidarity with them. The club also documented their testimonies gathered through stories relayed by their parents or written letters that family members were able to sneak out of the prison.

Mohamed Zaree, the Egypt program manager for the CIHRS, told Al-Monitor, “The idea of the show was to document the stories of detainees on hunger strikes from among different political movements, and of others who are not affiliated with any movement.”