LONDON - More than 40 failed Zimbabwean asylum seekers were on hunger strike in Britain on Saturday and two lawmakers from Prime Minister Tony Blair's party said they should not be sent home to a country the West has condemned.

The asylum seekers are being held in four detention centers. One of them, Crispen Kulinji, who was an organizing secretary and election coordinator for the opposition Movement for Democratic Change in Zimbabwe, has said he has only been taking fluids since Wednesday.

Member of Parliament Kate Hoey, who recently returned from a trip to Zimbabwe, and Richard Howitt, a Labor Party member of the European Parliament, said anyone sent back to the country faced an uncertain future.

A recent crackdown by President Robert Mugabe's government has destroyed tens of thousands of homes and businesses and drawn fierce criticism from rights groups as well as the United States and Britain.

British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said on Thursday the situation in Zimbabwe was of "serious international concern" and that no government that subscribed to human rights and democracy should allow this kind of thing to continue.

Hoey said Britain needed to unite over the issue.

"The government needs to be speaking with one voice," she told Reuters. "If the Foreign Office is saying Zimbabwe is such a dreadful place, then there's no way the Home Secretary should be sending people back there."

Howitt said: "We've correctly got very strident criticism of the Mugabe regime on human rights grounds which will be totally undermined if we are engaging in the forced return of people who have a genuine fear of persecution."

A spokesman for the Home Office said the government's policy was to remove people to Zimbabwe if they were found not to be in need of international protection.

The government changed the law in November 2004 to allow Zimbabweans to be deported against their will.

"Since returns were resumed to Zimbabwe last November, we have received no substantiated reports of abuse of any person returned to the country," Immigration Minister Tony McNulty said.

Kulinji had been due to be deported on Saturday but the move was temporarily delayed after Hoey asked that the case be re-examined.

"I think the fact that hunger strikes are taking place is bringing it to a head and the fact that (the Home Office) has been forced at least to delay this high profile case shows that they have been forced to think," Howitt said.

Kulinji told Sky News he was remaining on hunger strike to support his fellow Zimbabweans awaiting deportation.

Howitt said 95 Zimbabweans had been deported in the first three months of 2005.