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Iranian Kurdish refugees end hunger strike
30.7.2006
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AMMAN, (IRIN)
- Eight of the 198 Iranian-Kurdish refugees who have
been stranded at the Jordan-Iraq border since
January 2005 ended their near one-month hunger
strike on 21 July. This came a day after a joint
team from UNICEF and the Jordanian Ministry of
Health (MoH) provided them with medical assistance
and promised to visit them again within a month,
said the group's spokesperson.
“We finally decided to stop our hunger strike after
UNICEF came to assist us medically,” says Khabat
Mohammadi, a spokesperson for the refugees. “Also,
more foreign journalists called us and promised to
help us by reporting about our desperate situation.”
The group of hunger strikers consisted of six men,
aged between 20 and 45, and two women, aged 18 and
19. “As the team arrived, one of the men was in very
poor condition,” says Maha Homsi, UNICEF Protection
Officer. “Because his blood pressure was dropping by
the hour, he fainted several times.”
According to a statement released Thursday by
UNICEF, the mission’s medical team also examined and
vaccinated 193 refugees, including women and
children. However, because some children could not
be vaccinated during this visit, the UNICEF-MoH team
says they will return to the camp within a month.
The Iranian-Kurdish refugees arrived at the border
between Iraq and Jordan after fleeing al-Tash
refugee camp in Iraq’s western Anbar governorate,
following clashes there between insurgents and US
forces in January 2005.
Having been denied permission to enter Jordan,
however, the refugees have remained on the Iraqi
side of the border, an area prone to harsh weather
conditions.
The group has systematically refused an offer by the
UN refugee agency, UNHCR, to relocate and join
another group of Iranian-Kurdish refugees in Kawa
refugee camp, a safer location in northern Iraq’s
Arbil governorate.
The refugees have demanded to be resettled in a
third country but the UNCHR has repeatedly said that
this was not a “right”. According to the agency,
refugees can only be resettled in a third country if
there is a clear need, if there is no alternative
solution in the country of asylum and if the third
country is willing to resettle the refugees.
irinnews org
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