Photos: Iranian asylum-seekers sew their mouths shut to protest discrimination

After Slovenia declared last week that it would only let asylum seekers of Syrian, Afghan and Iraqi origin across its borders, Macedonia and other nearby countries followed suit. Now dozens of Iranian refugees have been left on the Greek side of the Greece-Macedonian border, reports Reuters, effectively excluded from consideration for asylum. In protest, several began a hunger strike on Monday, Nov. 23, sewing their mouths shut.

On Nov. 24, a spokesman for United Nations secretary general Ban Ki-Moon issued a statement calling for compassion, solidarity and shared responsibility, and noted that profiling asylum seekers by nationality “infringes the human right of all people to seek asylum, irrespective of their nationality, and to have their individual cases heard.”