Tuesday, May 16, 2006

Hunger Striking Tip

We should send one the former IRA hunger strikers in to St Patricks Cathedral to give some advice to the Afgan asylum seekers on hunger strike there since Sunday.

For starters someone seems to have mis-translated "hunger strike" for them as some of them are not drinking fluids either. If you refuse food its a hunger strike and you'll last around 60 days, if you refuse water it's suicide and you'll last 6 days at most. It usually takes the Irish government at least a full week to make any decision, so that's not good for them, regardless of whether you agree with their cause or not.

Update: The majority of the Afghani hunger strike at St Patrick's Cathedral have started taking water.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

It's the "rule of three".
3 weeks without food: Well at that stage the media will have all moved off to the next hard luck story so need faster results than that.

3 minutes without air: Bit too fast. Would make cracking TV though.

3 days without water. Now that's more like it. Start to get carted off into intensive care after 2 days and the cameras will still be outside.

You have got to remember also that some of these guys don't want to go back to Afganistan because they WERE the Taliban not because they are scared of the Taliban. Their spokesman admitted he was in the Taliban in interviews on Monday and got some advice overnight so on Tuesday he started to claim right to privacy when asked any questions on his past.

They came from a country that was officially the poorest in the world when they were running it and somehow they managed to find the thousands of dollars needed to pay a smuggler to get them to Europe!

Their applications were rejected because they have links to the Taliban and are really not the sort of guys we should have running around the 51st state. Half the group haven't been turned doen because they know their friends got turned down for Taliban membership and that's on their form also.

Letting them stay would make the security guards at Intel, Dell etc a bit twitchy.

I suggest we put them on the next Aeroflot plane to Cuba as if we send them back to Afganistan then that's where they are going to end up a week later.

Declan said...

Yeah I agree, if someone committed a crime in their home country they should not use the fact that they could be punished for it as an excuse to seek asylum. The Taliban members may face a pretty serious punishment if they are sent home, but they should answer for what they did in Afganistan.

Anonymous said...

Well it appears that the hunger strike has ended and the Afghanis have left the Cathedral.

Its about time! I hope these people get deported immediately, as they have broken the law.

I am all in favour of migration. In fact, I would like to have an open doors policy in Ireland. Let anyone into the country and give them six months to be self-sufficient. After this period, if they can't find a job, then kick them out.

At present, Asylum seekers entering Ireland are not allowed to work until their application has been processed. The fact that some applications take up to seven years to be processed is a shambles.

On another note, what were those “Residents Against Racism” protesters doing outside St Patricks Cathedral? This was not a racist event. It was a criminal one – trespassing, wasting police time, causing a public disturbance… Is there any law about deporting asylum seekers who break the law?