Two Bangladeshis have been admitted to hospital after staging a hunger strike for nearly a month to protest at their detention by Australia's immigration department, officials said yesterday.
Shah Mohammad Sayan Mahmud and Mohammed Masud Hay, both 28, have refused food for 26 days to press for a review of their visa applications.
The men have been refused protection visas and it is believed one has been served with a deportation notice, the national AAP news agency reported.
An immigration department spokesman said the men had been admitted to hospital in recent days but would not confirm reports they were being fed fluids and vitamins via tubes.
Refugee Action Coalition spokesman Ian Rintoul said he understood one of the detainees had breached the restrictions of his visa by working in a Sydney restaurant.
Meanwhile, a suicidal asylum-seeker from Zimbabwe who slashed his wrists and throat with broken glass has been released from hospital and returned to immigration detention.
An immigration department spokesman said Peter Jackson Mode, 24, was under medical care at Baxter detention center in South Australia, but refused to comment further.
Mode used broken glass from the door to his detention cell in an apparent attempt to try to kill himself on Saturday night.
Refugee advocates told AAP that Mode was the fourth Baxter detainee to attempt suicide in the past fortnight but the immigration spokesman would not confirm this.
Mode, a member of Zimbabwe's opposition Movement for Democratic Change who arrived in Australia last year, is appealing a failed asylum application. He said last month that guards at the detention center deliberately broke his leg during a protest.
The incidents have again put the spotlight on the government's tough policy on illegal immigrants, including mandatory detention which can last for years.
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