The Australian sister of the first asylum seeker to stitch his lips in the latest Manus Island protest has begged for the man to be allowed to see his daughter before he dies.
Hani (not his real name) has stitched his lips together and is refusing all food, water and medical treatment.
“He asks for his daughter always,” Hani’s sister told Guardian Australia. “He wants to see his daughter again. Before … I don’t know what happens.”
Before sewing up his lips in protest at his ongoing detention on Manus Island, Hani said his final request was that he be able to see his teenage daughter, also an Australian citizen, who lives in Sydney.
“I’m want to die”, a fellow detainee reported Hani as saying before he stitchedup his lips. “I just have one option, I just want to see my daughter and my sister. They are live in Australia for the last eight years. I miss them. I have to see them.”
Hani is a 40-year-old Egyptian Christian. He has been on Manus Island since December 2013. He has been unwell. Twice last year, in June and October, he was medically isolated because of a contagious illness.
His sister and daughter arrived in Australia eight years ago. They were granted refugee status seven years ago, and are now Australian citizens.
Hani last saw his daughter in 2012, when his wife – the mother of his daughter – died.
“He has suffered too much,” Hani’s sister said. “I love him very much, I am so worried about him … so worried he will die, he will be killed by [the] Australian government.”
Hani’s sister said she applied to travel to Manus Island to visit her brother, but was refused permission.
Hani’s sister said his daughter was “sad all the time, every day”. She said: “She has problems at school. She cannot go, because she worries for her father.”
Hani’s sister said she and other family members fled Egypt for other countries because of persecution faced by Egypt’s Christian minority.
Egyptian Christians have historically endured, and continue to face, systemic persecution.
The Human Rights Watch 2014 world report documented a series of instances of sectarian violence, including lynchings and attacks on churches, amid increasing Muslim-majority hostility towards religious minorities.
