*Ø* Blogmanac | Refugees start hunger strike in Belgium

When asylum seekers in Australia's concentration camp-like 'detention centres' sewed their lips shut, some Aussie politicians and radio jocks affected to interpret this as the actions not of terrified, desperate people but as the manipulations of sophisticatedly cynical enemies of the state.

Now, news from Belgium of more cynical ne'er-do-wells trying to bend a nice white government to their wicked will:


"As the Australian Government continues to urge Afghan asylum seekers in Australia to return home, in Belgium a similar policy has prompted a desperate response from the Afghans.

"The Belgian Interior Ministry announced this week that more than 1,000 Afghan asylum seekers would be repatriated within three to nine months.

"Now around 300 of the asylum seekers have occupied a Brussels Church, and many of them have gone on a hunger strike to protest the decision to send them home ...

"Hakimi Manisha is heavily pregnant, but has refused to take food, and now even water. She says she will be killed if she is returned to Afghanistan, and draws no distinction between the Taliban or those who replaced them.

HAKIMI MANISHA: They come in the night, they take their valuable things from the house, and that's very dangerous situation for, particularly for the women, there is not available woman rights for the woman, for the girls, and also for the children.

When I go to Afghanistan, I know I can't put my baby in the school, because if she go at morning to school, til night when she come back I must be afraid that what's happened with my baby ...

"How long can you go on not taking water, not eating, how long will your hunger strike continue for?

ASYLUM SEEKER: I must continue till the Government from Belgium change their decision, when I dead, or my baby dead, or anybody dead, and these people – the Government from Belgium – must be responsible."

Source
"I would prefer to die of hunger than be forced to go back there."