A CROSS-PARTY group of MSPs joined union leaders and refugee support groups yesterday to demand that the Government lifted deportation orders on three asylum-seekers who have been on hunger strike for 16 days.

The Kurdish men have said that they would rather die in Scotland than be sent back to Iran where they claim they would face certain death at the hands of the country’s security forces.

Last month Faroq Haidari, Fariborz Gravindi and Mokhtar Haydary stitched their own mouths closed after their asylum applications were turned down by the Home Office.

And on Thursday two of the men were rushed to hospital after falling unconscious as a result of their hunger strike, although they later discharged themselves.

Supporters say that the men may have just days to live and yesterday demanded that David Blunkett, the Home Secretary, and Jack McConnell, Scotland’s First Miniter, stop the deportation orders.

In an open letter to the two, politicians from the Scottish Green Party, the Scottish Socialists, Scottish Labour and the Scottish National Party demanded the policy of “deportation or destitution” be abolished.

The letter said: “As we write this letter, all three men are becoming increasingly weak as a result of their hunger strike. We demand that, as Home Secretary and First Minister of Scotland, you intervene to prevent the catastrophe of irreparable injury or death which currently awaits these men. We are horrified both by the Home Office’s ruling against these men, and by the ‘deportation or destitution’ policy in general.

“We find it impossible to accept that the British Government genuinely believes that Iranian Kurds who have accused the Tehran regime of human rights abuses would be safe to return to Iran.”

The letter was also signed by the poet Liz Lochhead, the human rights lawyer Aamer Anwar and John Paul MacDonald of the Scottish Fire Brigades Union.

It was written as Bill Spiers, general secretary of the Scottish Trades Union Congress, met the asylum-seekers at their Glasgow bedsit. He said that he would be meeting the Home Secretary later this month when he would raise the issue with him.

The Home Office has refused to comment on individual asylum cases but described the situation as “deeply regrettable”.

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