ADELAIDE, Australia (AP) — Two men in a remote Australian detention center for asylum seekers sewed their lips together Wednesday as part of a wider hunger strike that some inmates have vowed to continue until they die, officials and reports said.
The detention center at Woomera, a former missile testing base east of Sydney, is one of five camps where hundreds of mostly Middle Eastern boat people are being held while authorities consider their requests for asylum. The policy has been criticized by rights activists but proven a vote-winner for Australia’s conservative coalition government.
The Immigration Department said that 127 detainees at Woomera have refused food since Monday, including the two men who sewed their lips shut. Their nationalities were not released, but most asylum seekers in Australian camps are from Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran and Sri Lanka.
The protest began after officials told some inmates that they would be returned to their homelands within weeks, refugee advocates said.
An Iranian inmate who identified himself only as Simon told The Australian Associated Press that the hunger strikers were prepared to die.
“We will continue this protest until the situation is better or we die,” he was quoted as saying. “We are treated here like animals.”
Simon said that 190 people were refusing to eat Wednesday.
The Woomera camp, which stands on a dusty plain 1,120 miles west of Sydney, holds 210 asylum seekers.
Those taking part in the hunger strike were being monitored by medical staff, an immigration spokesman said on condition of anonymity.
