A GROUP of jailed asylum seekers protesting against their detention continued a three week hunger strike yesterday in Rochester Prison, Kent, amid British government claims that some of them were criminals.
There were acrimonious exchanges in the House of Commons after the hunger strikers' supporters warned that two of them were in a critical condition.
Five men were refusing all food and fluids and were being cared for at the hospital wing of the prison. Seven others were taking fluid but no food, the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants (JCWI) said.
Ms Ann Widdecombe, Home Office Minister for Prisons, defending the government's policy of jailing certain asylum seekers, said: "Detention is only used very sparingly indeed and only for those who it is believed would otherwise abscond."
She continued: "Among those involved in the ... protest is one who has served a sentence of imprisonment for two convictions of indecent assault against children and was subsequently removed from the UK and re-entered unlawfully. Another was detained by the police when found to be attempting, further immigration deception.
She denied that all the protesters were being held for long periods, saying half had been detained either this month or last.
The hunger strikers, from Algeria, Somalia, Russia and Nigeria, are protesting at being held in prison, rather than an immigration detention centre, while their requests for asylum are processed. A JCWI spokesman said some of the protesters had been held for up to two years.
The Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture condemned Britain's treatment of the asylum seekers as "inhumane".
A Home Office spokesman yesterday ruled out force feeding.
Some 180 asylum seekers are being held at Rochester Prison, but the Home Office said they were held in "separate wings of the prison (and) are not treated like criminals".
Ms Widdecombe clashed angrily in the Commons with Labour MPs who questioned her Christian values.
Labour's Ms Ann Clwyd noted that the minister "constantly wears a cross around her neck". She challenged Ms Widdecombe, who has left the Church of England to convert to Catholicism: "Can you tell us how you equate your Christian conscience with allowing these people to die?"
The minister, clearly angered, said she had explained the circumstances in which some of the hunger strikers had come to be detained, singling out one who had illegally returned to Britain after being imprisoned for indecently assaulting children.
Ms Widdecombe told the Labour MP: "Since you challenge my Christianity, perhaps I could quote to you, `Whosoever shall offend one of these my little ones, it will be better for him that a millstone shall be put around his neck'. You know that very well."
Ms Clwyd, seated on the backbenches, shouted: "Thou shalt not kill!"
Labour's Mr Andrew Faulds told her: "Second only to the Home Secretary [Mr Michael Howard], you are the most nauseous personality in the place."
Later, he withdrew the comment.
. Up to a quarter of chief constables in Britain might be Freemasons, MPs investigating Masonic influence in the police - were told last night. The acknowledgement of the possible extent of lodge membership among the most senior police officers came as the body representing rank and file policemen agreed "a significant proportion of its members are probably masons".