The government of Spain is violating the rights of migrants and asylum seekers who arrive illegally on Spanish shores, Human Rights Watch said in a new report released today.
In the 35-page report, entitled "The Other Face of the Canary Islands: Rights Violations Against Migrants and Asylum Seekers," Human Rights Watch criticized the substandard detention conditions and the inadequate procedural rights afforded migrants and asylum seekers upon their arrival to the Spanish islands of Fuerteventura and Lanzarote. Conditions there fall below standards set in both national and international law and should spur a drive to improve the treatment of migrants in Spain and throughout Europe, Human Rights Watch said.
The detention facilities in Fuerteventura and Lanzarote are a makeshift response to the rapid increase in the number of migrants arriving to the Canary Islands in recent years. The number of illegal migrants intercepted upon arrival in the Canaries rose dramatically from 2,241 migrants in 2000 to 4,035 arrivals in 2001. Recent figures suggest that arrivals in 2002 will be even higher, reporting close to 500 arrivals in January alone-almost double the arrivals for January of last year. Migrants come from North Africa, principally Morocco and the Western Sahara, and from sub-Saharan African countries such as Cameroon, Congo, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea-Bissau, Guinea Conakry, the Ivory Coast, Liberia, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, and Togo.
"Spain faces a real challenge in the Canary Islands," said Elizabeth Andersen, executive director of the Europe and Central Asia division of Human Rights Watch. "But locking people up under such appalling conditions isn't the solution. Immigration controls have to go hand-in-hand with protections for migrants' basic rights."
Human Rights Watch's investigation, conducted at the end of 2001, involved interviews with over thirty migrants who had been detained in the Canary Island facilities, as well as lawyers, doctors, migrants aid organizations and government representatives familiar with the situation.
The Human Rights Watch report describes detention conditions for migrants and asylum seekers held in two extremely overcrowded old airport facilities on Fuerteventura and Lanzarote. At times, more than 500 migrants are kept in a space that the Spanish Red Cross has determined to be fit for fifty people. Detainees are cut off from the outside world. There are no telephones. Visits are not permitted. Detainees can never leave the premises; they cannot exercise, and they have no exposure to fresh air or sunlight. The state of medical care and sanitary conditions in the facilities also raises serious concern, particularly since the volunteer doctors at the facilities recently suspended their services there in protest over the conditions.
Human Rights Watch found that as a matter of course migrants and asylum seekers arriving illegally to the islands on small boats or rafts are issued orders of deportation and detained in these substandard conditions for up to forty days. Detainees receive virtually no information about their rights, are rarely provided with interpretation or translation-even when asked to sign documents for their deportation-and have inadequate access to meaningful legal representation and individualized judicial oversight of their cases. Asylum seekers experience serious difficulties in their attempts to apply for asylum.
The Human Rights Watch report lists a number of steps the Spanish government can take to address the situation, including:
- Immediately pursuing ways to alleviate the severe overcrowding, particularly in the Fuerteventura facility, and other appalling conditions of detention, including the absence of communication, exercise, and fresh air;
- Providing all arriving migrants and asylum seekers with information on their rights in Spain-in a language they can understand;
- Opening the facilities to public visits by nongovernmental organizations, legal service agencies, and humanitarian organizations;
- Finding alternatives to detention, such as reporting requirements, both for adults and for small children, especially in light of the present situation;
- Providing necessary training to Spanish lawyers and judicial authorities working with arriving migrants and asylum seekers in the Canary Islands on the Spanish foreigners' and asylum law;
- Ensuring that migrants wishing to seek asylum have the practical means to do so and are not barred from making such applications; and
- Clarifying among the responsible government agencies, including the relevant Ministries, the varying procedures by which migrants may be deported from Spain, with a view toward ensuring that the treatment of migrants and asylum seekers is both just and predictable.
Human Rights Watch called on the United Nations, Council of Europe, European Union, and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe to address its concerns in the Canary Islands and elsewhere in Europe where similar conditions persist.
"Spain is not alone in needing to improve its treatment of migrants and asylum seekers," Andersen said. "There is clearly a need for heightened attention to the effect of European immigration policy on the rights of migrants and asylum seekers. As a country that is grappling with these challenges at home, we hope that during its current E.U. presidency Spain will put migrants' rights squarely on the Union's immigration policy agenda."
The report on conditions on the Canary Islands is part of a series of Human Rights Watch investigations into the treatment of migrants in Europe. Human Rights Watch published several commentaries on conditions in Greece last year. Reports on implementation of Spain's new foreigner law and on the treatment of Moroccan children in the North African Spanish cities of Melilla and Ceuta will be published later this year.
