More than 100 asylum seekers at Australia’s Woomera detention centre are on the second day of a hunger strike they hoped would prompt the government to give them visas they have been denied, officials said on Wednesday.
At least two of the mostly Middle Eastern and Central Asian asylum seekers had sewed their lips together to draw attention to their plight.
At the beginning of the year, hundreds of detainees joined hunger strikes and many sewed their lips together to protest delays in processing their visa claims.
An Immigration Department official said 122 detainees, including 12 children, may have skipped meals at Woomera, a desert outpost 500km north of Adelaide.
The Australian government is to lock up all illegal arrivals who claim refugee status.
There are about 1 250 asylum seekers currently in detention on the mainland, the majority having had visa applications turned down because they were unable to prove they were genuine refugees.
A quarter of Australia’s detainees are Afghans, who last month were each offered free passage back to Afghanistan, and a resettlement allowance of Aus$2 000 if they abandoned their asylum claims.
Few of the Afghans declared illegal immigrants have taken up the deal.
Australia’s six detention camps have a history of arson, rioting, hunger strikes and episodes of self harm.
The official told Australia’s ABC Radio that it was impossible to determine who among the 212 Woomera detainees was fasting and who was not.
He said some detainees had asked to be separated from the main body of detainees because they feared repercussions if they didn’t join the protest. – Sapa-DPA