Since yesterday four hunger strikers have positioned themselves in front of Australia House at the Strand (London). They are staging a protest in support of the refugees locked up in the notorious Australian Woomera Detention Centre, who have been on hunger strike themselves for the past sixteen days. Children, women and men incarcerated in Woomera for sometimes more than 2 years, have refused to eat or drink anything since June 24, because the Australian government threatens to deport Afghan Hazaris. Some of them have sewn their lips together.

The protesters at Aldwych, not your regular activists but more 'concerned citizens', demand that the appalling conditions of asylum seekers in the Australian Woomera Detention Centre end now. Woomera has been likened to a Nazi concentration by human rights organisations and has received severe criticism from UN officials. Constant punishments, institutional violence, breaches of all basic human rights and repeated suicide attempts are the everyday reality of the detainees who are almost all simply waiting for their asylum application to be processed, which is their legal right even in Australia. Together with the Refugee Embassy and other refugee advocate groups in Australia the Aldwych hunger strikers are calling on the governments of the world to impose sanctions on Australia, in the same way that they did with South Africa. The psychological torture imposed on the prisoners in their concentration camps has resulted in an epidemic of mental illness and suicide attempts within those camps. Children as young as nine years old have tried to kill themselves.

The London hunger strike does not stand on its own. Yesterday, people in Newcastle were being issued with black armbands, to be worn in solidarity with the starving hunger strikers at Woomera Detention Centre. In Kyogle, New South Wales, a woman took a vow of silence for twenty-four hours, as a symbol of solidarity with the detainees who have been silenced by the Government's efforts to isolate them through incarceration in the most remote areas possible, denial of visits, phone calls, media access, and through interference with their mail. This Wednesday 5pm Chilout (Children out of Detention) will be holding a solidarity fast outside Australia House as well. The two protests will unite on Wednesday evening in a mass protest against the detention and abuse of refugees in Australia.

The UK protest follow several months of actions concerning Woomera in Australia and coincides with Australia's National Day of Fasting yesterday. Hunger strikes in Mexico, Israel, India and the United States have been reported as well.

The hunger strikers at Aldwych keep their camp in front of the Australian High Commission until Wednesday afternoon in defiance of police threats (allegedly based on 'The Vienna Convention') that they will be removed, since their presence constitutes an 'intrusion into the dignity of the building'. Unwittingly the police officer concerned provided the protesters with their action theme: "What government puts the dignity of a building over the dignity of a person?".

The protesters call for everyone to join their and Chilout's action.