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GVs Hunger strikers in Paris, France, holding placards (3 shots)
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CUs AND SVs Strikers holding placards (6 shots)
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CUs Placards calling for liberation of Rumanian dissidents (4 shots)
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SVs Rumanian artist Sergin Manoliu and fellow artist, mother Carmen Manoliu, seated on bench (2 shots)



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Script is copyright Reuters Limited. All rights reserved

Background: INTRODUCTION: Four men and woman are on public hunger strike in Paris, France, in protest against Rumania's policy on love and human rights. Three Frenchmen are refusing to eat because Rumania won't allow their fiancees to leave the country to join them, and a Rumanian artist and his mother are campaigning for the release of a fellow human rights dissident locked up in a labour camp.

SYNOPSIS: The group are starving themselves outside the Palais de Chaillot, one of the French capital's cultural centres, in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower. For three years Jean Paul Mariaccia, Silvio Hodos and Bernard Maurel have been waiting for their Rumanian fiancees to get permission to get married. Following a joint appeal to French President Valerie Giscard d'Estaing, a senior civil servant was sent to Rumania to take up the case -- but without success. Meanwhile, the love-lorn hunger-strikers have been jointed in starvation by two Rumanian artists - a mother and son who were exiled after signing a petition calling for their government to honour its commitment to the Helsinki agreement on human rights. They're protesting about one fellow-petitioner being sent to a labour camp, and want him release.