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Whilst the G8 crooks fiddle at Gleneagles

megan redmond | 06.07.2005 01:31

young men in detention are dying on hunger strike.

Two Zimbabwean hunger strikers in Harmondsworth, Timbha Mqhubeli and Harris Nyatsanza, started their hunger strike long before the official start of the mass hunger strike by Zimbabweans. Timbha has been refusing meals since the 2nd June and he is very thin and weak now. Neither of them can walk. We are trying to get them moved to hospital but no one will allow it. A gastro-enterologist has advised that they be taken to hospital urgently but we have to wait until morning to see if they are still conscious and once everyone has put on their makeup and blow-dried their hair perhaps we can get proper medical care for these dying men.

Immigration detention centres are really concentration camps and the government would like to keep that a secret and have people die rather than lose face. The detention centre staff are sadistic thugs and the medical care inside is negligent and incompetent. To rehydrate, Timbha was told to drink water from a handbasin where someone had spat loads of blood and it had never been cleaned.

Harris and Timbha were both put in isolation as a punishment for being on hunger strike. Harris was stripped of his clothing and locked in the isolation unit with the air conditioning turned up high. On another occasion a security guard threw an apple at him for no reason. Is this what you call human rights?

megan redmond