November 22, 2010 -- The Social Justice Network reported that up to 250 detainees are on the third day of a hunger strike in the Australian Christmas Island detention center, but this has not been confirmed by the Immigration Department. The hunger strike was declared by the detainees right after they heard about the death of Ahmad Al Akabi, an Iraqi detainee in a Sydney detention center Tuesday. The detainees on hunger strike are Iraqis, Iranian Kurds, Palestinians and Algerians, SJN said. “We also learnt that 10 of them are sewing their lips together on Friday,” SJN spokesman Jamal Daoud said in a statement. A spokeswoman for the department said “the situation in the centre remains calm” even as 300 detainees were conducting a sit-down peaceful protest in the center’s green heart. There were no reports to the department of threats of self-harm,” she said, while denying any knowledge of a hunger strike. An Iraqi journalist who is now in his fifth month in the detention center named Hasan Muteb contacted Daoud. “He told me that they declared hunger strike as protest of the deadly slow process of their application.” Two Department of Immigration official met with Muteb Wednesday, Daoud said, but he was not informed about the slow processing. “As we warned before, it is very clear that things are getting out of hand, where more and more people are hitting the bottom of helplessness and they could commit desperate actions at any time now.”