Nearly a dozen Afghan asylum seekers have been hospitalized following a hunger strike in which some stitched their mouths shut to protest the United Nations' refusal to grant them refugee status, officials said Saturday. A total of 39 migrants launched the hunger strike Tuesday, after living in legal limbo for more than two years in a hostel in Bogor on the southern outskirts of the Indonesian capital, Jakarta. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has repeatedly rejected their appeals for asylum status, refusing to send them to a third country and leaving them no option except to return to Afghanistan. On Wednesday, 18 of the hunger strikers sewed their mouths shut to press their demand. Eleven of those were taken to a hospital Friday.
