“Moving to a safe country is the only request”

Human Rights Committee - a number of Iranian and Afghan refugees who have been sit in front of UNHCR’s office in Van a city in Turkey, have begun a hunger strike from 29th of March( 9th of Farvardin). According to the reports, the official officers who have to handle these special cases have not done anything about them. Only today the UN official delegation that came from Ankara has met the hunger strike’s refugees.

After six days of their hunger strikes and continues it, the worries increased about their physical conditions. One of the refugees said to CHRR: “Three days of hunger strike was dry and after three days, many refugees and the police of Van city requested us to change dry hunger strikes and we just start to drink water”.

This refugee said:” We are from various groups and this protest doesn’t belong to specific group or party. All theses hunger strikes are having social or political cases."

He announced that the main request is “move to a safe third country “and said:” the request for transfer to third countries of each of these refugees had accepted for last three or four years ago but they are still in Turkey. Some of them are living here for over than 7 years.”

This refugee says” the UN doesn’t pay enough attention to their requests. Only one time they had a short conversation with the UN officer of the Van city. He continued: "today evening, we spoke with a group from Ankara. They said we will investigate your cases, and they asked us to break our hunger strike. But in response we said we don’t have trust to UN’s anymore, because in past years they only pass our case between different countries without any achievement, we will keep hunger strike until acceptance of our request from one country."

This refugee lives in Van city and about the situation of all refugees there, he said:"situation is terrible, we live very hard, because we have no service from any organization. We must do hard physical works to gain up to 10 dollars a day and even such a job can’t be found easily. The refugee’s situation here in Turkey is tragic."

In the end he said: "We will continue the hunger strike until getting a certain answer from the UN and the countries in 1951 resolution."

Translated by : Ravandi
Source: http://www.chrr.biz/spip.php?article13777