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Statewatch News online: Scathing attack on detention conditions in Canary Islands
28 March 2012
Spain: Scathing attack
on detention conditions and the violation of migrants' and asylum
seekers' rights in the Canary Islands
In a lengthy report dated 21 February
2002 and entitled "The Other Face of the Canary Islands:
Rights Violations Against Migrants and Asylum Seekers" based
on a six-week research mission to Spain in October and November
2001 Human Rights Watch criticises "substandard detention
conditions" and "inadequate procedural rights afforded
[to] immigrants and asylum seekers upon their arrival to the
Spanish islands of Fuerteventura and Lanzarote".
The report includes recommendations to the Spanish government,
the UN, the Council of Europe, the EU and OSCE (the Organisation
for Security and Cooperation in Europe). Highlighting the "appalling
treatment" reserved to immigrants arriving illegally in
the Canary Islands, they call on Spanish authorities to address
issues such as detention conditions which violate the basic human
rights of migrants (including overcrowding, unhygienic conditions,
inadequate medical care, no access to visitors and telephones,
and the detention of asylum seekers and families with children),
and the lack of access to judicial remedy against detention,
lawyers, information on their rights, monitoring by lawyers,
NGOs or families, interpretation and translation facilities and
adequately trained staff, among other concerns. The EU is invited
to ensure whether its common policy on immigration pursued following
the Tampere Summit in October 1999 complies with the obligation
of the community and individual member states to protect human
rights.
The report describes conditions in the airport detention facilities
in Lanzarote and Fuerteventura, mainly used to detain North African
and sub-Saharan Africans arriving in the Canaries in pateras
(4,035 in 2001). In Fuerteventura there have been occasions when
almost 400 migrants have been detained in a space deemed to be
large enough to accommodate 50 by the Red Cross. The report is
littered with quotations drawn from interviews with migrants,
lawyers, doctors, migrant aid organisations and government authorities.
Testimonies from migrants, doctors and Red Cross staff provide
the most damning indictment of conditions in the detention facilities.
One migrant from Guinea Bissau stated "I entered the Fuerteventura
camp on September 12, 2001. ... It's a prison. We don't even
see the sun. For twenty-four days I did not see the sun".
Chronically unhygienic conditions, a lack of facilities for medical
staff, the deprivation of all communication with the outside
world and the detention of children, are only part of the problems
for detainees. Authorities interviewed by HRW justify such conditions
by claiming that it is an "emergency procedure", and
that it should be thought of as "temporary".
With regards to the process leading to detention, the report
documents the failure to provide migrants with information regarding
their rights, adequate translation or interpretation, or legal
representation. The process of getting migrants to sign papers
which they don't understand appears widespread, and a man from
the Ivory Coast claimed that "They hit me at the police
station because there was a misunderstanding with the interpretation.
I got hit in the back with a baton." The report also tackles
issues of deportation/repatriation, judicial oversight, difficulties
in applying for asylum, arbitrary detention, providing some background
on international and regional human rights standards which should
be applicable. It concludes that "the Spanish authorities
routinely violate the human rights of migrants enshrined in domestic
, regional and international law". Elizabeth Andersen, executive
director of the Europe and Central Asia division of HRW recognises
that in the Canary Islands Spain faces a "challenge",
"But locking people up under such appalling conditions isn't
the solution. immigration controls have to go hand-in-hand with
protection for migrants' basic rights".
Sources:
Human
Rights Watch press release Human
Rights Watch report
Statewatch
News online
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