Displaying items by tag: hunger strike

The Belgian government is under pressure to offer residence permits to hundreds of undocumented migrants who have been on hunger strike in Brussel’s Béguinage church and university buildings for sixty days and are in a life and death situation. Alarm grows because some are now refusing water. Four men stitched their lips together last month to press their case for legal access to the jobs market and social services. Two UN officials urged the government to offer temporary residence permits to the 476 hunger strikers. 150,000 sans papiers live in Belgium, according to the campaign group ‘We Are Belgium Too’, which is calling for the regularisation of undocumented migrants. Many have been in Belgium for five or ten years. Belgium’s minister for asylum and migration refused a blanket amnesty to undocumented workers. The deputy prime minister and other Socialist ministers threatened to quit the government if any hunger strikers died. It is becoming a political snowball.

CSW has called on China to release Christian human rights defender and former lawyer Zhang Zhan, who is on a hunger strike, causing fears for her health, after 150 days in detention. She posted videos and articles from Wuhan about the Covid-19 outbreak. Social media platforms are blocked in China. She questioned whether the authorities' response to the epidemic infringed on human rights, and asked if the severity of the outbreak had been covered up. She was deeply concerned about the voiceless Wuhan citizens who face destitution after losing livelihoods. She is accused of ‘picking quarrels and provoking trouble’ and refuses to plead guilty. Zhang’s lawyer met her for the first time in detention on 18 September and reported she was still on a hunger strike and had lost weight. Detention staff are force-feeding her as she refuses to eat or drink anything.

On Christmas Eve British-Australian academic Kylie Moore-Gilbert started an open-ended hunger strike in protest at being sentenced to ten years on espionage charges. She wants, at the very least, to be moved from solitary confinement, where she has been since October 2018. On 30 December British-Iranian Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe said she would go on hunger strike in solidarity with Kylie. Just before Christmas, Kylie wrote to the Australian prime minister, pleading for ministers to do more to secure her release. A third dual national, Fariba Adelkhah, is also on hunger strike. The French government has summoned the Iranian ambassador over her detention. A government spokesman rejected the publicity they are receiving, saying Iran would not submit to political games or propaganda. Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe and many other imprisoned dual nationals in Tehran believe they are political hostages.

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe is on hunger strike in an Iranian prison. Her husband Richard has joined her hunger strike and is holding his own vigil by staying in a tent outside the Iranian embassy in London. The embassy has now erected metal barriers outside the entrance to the embassy and Richard and his supporters are warned not to touch them. They are protesting over Nazanin’s ‘unfair treatment’ by Iran. Richard will not end his vigil until his wife ends hers. Richard’s supporters said the fencing is an attempt by Iran to ‘scare Richard off’. They tweeted, ‘Appalling behaviour this morning in response to the peaceful hunger strike Richard is undertaking! Moving barriers to block off the tree of hope. We will not be beaten.’ They have called on Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt to demand that the Iran ambassador ‘stop the intimidation’.

British charity worker Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, jailed in Iran since 2016, says that guards have cancelled her weekly phone calls with her husband and reduced her food rations just days after she announced she would start a hunger strike on 14 January in protest at being barred access to doctors for a breast cancer scare and a painful neurological condition. The food rations reduction affects the whole ward, and is described as a ‘cost-saving measure’. Fellow-prisoner and hunger striker Narges Mohammadi, one of Iran’s most prominent activists, was also not permitted to call her husband and children in France. Nazanin’s husband Richard, who fears she is not strong or well enough to survive a hunger strike, has called for an urgent meeting with the Iranian ambassador to London to discuss her case.