PARIS: Four hard-left French deputies who were detained by Israel after boarding a Gaza-bound flotilla have declared a hunger strike, their party said.
“We have no news from them” apart from “brief exchanges with their lawyers and with the French consul who was able to visit them,” hard-left France Unbowed member of European Parliament Manon Aubry told French radio station Franceinfo Sunday.
“Their detention conditions are difficult,” she said, describing more than 10 people per cell and difficulty accessing water.
France Unbowed announced Saturday that two of its national deputies, Francois Piquemal and Marie Mesmeur, and two of its MEPs, Rima Hassan and Emma Fourreau, had declared a hunger strike “in solidarity with the Palestinian people”.
Aubry called on French authorities to repatriate their nationals.
Israel detained 30 French citizens after intercepting the Global Sumud Flotilla, a fleet of 45 ships that aimed to break Israel’s siege on Gaza and deliver humanitarian aid to Palestinians in the territory.
“It is time for France to finally take action,” Aubry said, echoing her party’s national coordinator Manuel Bompard’s calls for “France to finally say something” on French television channel LCI.
France Unbowed leader Jean-Luc Melenchon on Saturday slammed “the cowards of the French government”, pointing out that detained nationals from several other countries have already been returned home from Israel.
Meanwhile, “(French) deputies are ignored by their assemblies. Let us all remember this,” he wrote on X.
Former Macron minister and current MEP Nathalie Louiseau has countered that “France is doing what it needs to do” and “is providing consular protection to its citizens who were part of this flotilla”.
She called France Unbowed’s involvement in the flotilla “troubling”.
“Is it really to shed light on the Palestinians and their suffering in Gaza, or is it a self-promotion effort? I’m afraid the latter is the case,” she told French channel France 3.
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