The 16 men, from Pakistan, Iran, and the Sikh region of India, were released two days later. An additional asylum seeker, a woman from Ghana who was not on hunger strike, remains in prison.

The men told the December 2 New Zealand Herald that while in prison, "we were held like animals." Prison authorities simply watched as their health steadily deteriorated.

William Smith, executive secretary of the Auckland Refugee Council, told Radio New Zealand News December 2, "It was the public fight that got them released." Regular pickets of 20 people, and some as large as 70, were held outside the prison and the Immigration Service's Auckland offices. On November 26, some 40 people marched through central Auckland to demand the hunger strikers' release.

The growing support for the asylum seekers was registered when 13 members of the Auckland City Council, including Mayor Christine Fletcher, signed an open letter to Acting Immigration Minister Wyatt Creech asking for their release. Fletcher and her deputy, Bruce Hucker, visited the hunger strikers in prison November 29 prior to the High Court decision.

That same morning, Labour Party leader and newly elected prime minister Helen Clark told reporters that she urgently wanted to know why the men were being detained.

Creech, the acting minister of immigration in the outgoing National Party–led government, immediately attacked the High Court ruling and announced that the Immigration Service would appeal against it. The Immigration Service is continuing to deny the immigrants temporary visitor permits until this appeal is ruled on. This means they remain in the country without status and with no right to welfare benefits.

Their application for refugee status will go before the Refugee Status Appeals Authority. Eighty percent of such applications lodged each year in New Zealand are turned down.

Terry Coggan is a member of the Engineering, Printing and Manufacturing Union.  
 
 
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