Immigration Detainees On Weeks-long Hunger Strike

A concern group said 15 people detained at the Castle Peak Bay Immigration Centre (CIC) have been on a hunger strike for three weeks over what they see as their indefinite detention at the facility.

The CIC detainees rights concern group said at least two dozen people started the protest on June 29, and some of the hunger strikers have been held for between two months and nearly two years, and that they feel there's no other way to raise complaints about their plight.

A member of the group, Anna Tsui, said that one of the detainees even started refusing water since Saturday.

Tsui said the group have sought all possible avenues including trying to have a lawyer seek a judicial review of their removal orders, and filed complaints with the CIC's complaint mechanism, only to be told they "just have to wait longer".

"A lot of them expressed deep impatience about this, and it was a huge physical and mental torture for them not to meet their families outside," she said.

She said that some of those held inside include torture claimants or people applying to be torture claimants.

Others have relatives who hold Hong Kong ID cards, and they say they can't understand why they can't be bailed out or get a recognizance paper while their case is being processed.

Tsui told RTHK's Richard Pyne that hunger strikes are a common occurrence in the detention centre going back as far as 2000.

"Unfortunately it's something that happens regularly in the CIC, that is because the situation is so desperate that people can only really resort to self-harm in form of a hunger strike to get attention from the staff to care about them."

RTHK has contacted the authorities for a response.