World IN BRIEF : TAIWAN : Illegal Immigrants Stage Hunger Strike

Illegal immigrants from mainland China went on a hunger strike at a Taiwan detention center to protest delays in being sent home. About 300 detainees at the Ching Lu Detention Center in Ilan smashed furniture and broke windows the day before to protest overcrowding and to press their demands that they be allowed to set sail in their own boats. In the past, Taiwanese officials simply sent the illegal immigrants back to the mainland in their own fishing boats, many of them barely seaworthy, but a series of accidents forced the government to turn the repatriation effort over to the Red Cross. Now bureaucratic delays have slowed the exodus.