Detained French lawmakers from flotilla declare hunger strike as their party urges Paris to free them

Four hard-left French lawmakers who were detained by Israel after taking part in a Gaza-bound flotilla have declared a hunger strike, their party says.

“We have no news from them,” apart from “brief exchanges with their lawyers and with the French consul who was able to visit them,” France Unbowed member of European Parliament Manon Aubry tells French radio station Franceinfo.

“Their detention conditions are difficult,” she adds, describing that more than 10 people are in each cell and have difficulty accessing water.

France Unbowed says two of its national deputies, Francois Piquemal and Marie Mesmeur, and two of its MEPs, Rima Hassan and Emma Fourreau, declared a hunger strike “in solidarity with the Palestinian people.”

Aubry calls on French authorities to repatriate their nationals.

“It is time for France to finally take action,” Aubry says, 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 says France is providing consular protection and calls 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 tells French channel France 3.