Five asylum seekers in an Australian
immigration detention centre are staging a hunger strike after being held in
detention for over a year.
The men have been refusing to eat for over nine days in protest over the time being taken to
process their refugee applications. One of the men, a 33-year-old man from
Iran, was taken to hospital on his ninth day of the hunger strike. A member of
the Refugee Action Collective said the man was returned to the detention centre
on the same day but resumed the hunger strike as soon as he was back in
detention. “[More] people are willing to join him on the strike. I wouldn't be
surprised if it does keep going,” she said. “It’s reaching boiling point.”
Members of the Refugee Action Collective
regularly visit the detention centre in Melbourne and say that the lack of
information for the detainees about their cases has led to them taking strike
action. “There's no communication. No one knows how long they’ll have to wait.
The [Australian Government] doesn't have to give a time frame so tensions are
reaching quite high.”
The Refugee Action Collective member said men are desperate “They're just waiting and
they're getting pushed over the edge.” One of the striking detainees was given
refugee status more than five months ago but is still in detention waiting for
his security clearance.
A spokesman
for the Department of Immigration and Citizenship said that the men on hunger
strike were being watched closely. “Food and water is available to detainees at
all times; we encourage them to eat,” he said. The Immigration Department also
said the men had access to proper levels of health care and support. He added
that “the protest will have no effect on the outcome of their cases.”
The hunger strike comes as concerns are rising
about the increasing number of asylum seekers trying to get to Australia from
Iran. The number of Iranians
trying to reach Australia by boat has increased dramatically in recent months. In
2009-10 Iranians were just 6% of the asylum
seekers arriving in Australia by boat. By 2010-11 they made up 36%. Recent
figures show that asylum seekers from Iran now make up almost 50% of the people
arriving by boat in Australia. 1,549 Iranians arrived in 2010-11.
The increase is leading to fears that
thousands of Iranians could be denied refugee status but be unable to return to
Iran. Immigration Department figures show that most of the Iranian asylum
seekers were found not to be refugees in their first application. Normally,
people who are not accepted as refugees are sent back to their home country,
even if they don’t want to be. But in the case of Iranian asylum seekers, they
can’t be returned to Iran because the Iranian Government will not accept them.
The result could be thousands of Iranians in Australian detention centres
indefinitely.
No comments:
Post a Comment