Asylum seekers on hunger strike

Asylum seekers from Eritrea and Ethiopia at Ta' Kandja started a hunger strike on Monday in protest at being kept in detention without being given any information whatsoever about their future.

A spokesman for the hunger strikers said they had been in detention for 15 months without any information and this was too long.

Accommodation at Ta' Kandja was very basic and while the Christian world was currently celebrating the birth of Jesus, asylum seekers in detention were kept in suffering, the spokesman added.

Police commissioner John Rizzo said when contacted yesterday he would prefer questions to be put in writing. He said he would answer the questions today.

Some 80 Eritreans and Ethiopians at the Safi Barracks ended a 10-day hunger strike on October 9 after they failed in their goal of persuading the authorities to grant them freedom or improve their conditions of detention.

Only two days before Christmas, the government decided to transfer about 80 Eritreans and Ethiopians who entered Malta illegally in March and July 2002 from detention to an open centre as a sign of goodwill.

However, 14 other Eritreans, four being detained at Safi Barracks and 10 at Ta' Kandja, were not transferred. They had entered Malta in October 2002.