EUROPE-MIGRANTS/CZECH Migrants, activists concerned about conditions in Czech detention centers

Record ID: 135782

  • Title: EUROPE-MIGRANTS/CZECH Migrants, activists concerned about conditions in Czech detention centers
  • Date: 23rd October 2015
  • Summary: BELA POD BEZDEZEM, CZECH REPUBLIC (FILE - OCTOBER 14, 2015) (REUTERS) POLICE GUARDING THE CENTER
  • Embargoed: 7th November 2015 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Czech Republic
  • Country: Czech Republic
  • Topics: General
  • Reuters ID: LVAAQFFLVH6K3EFVJK5PK0Y7ZVB4
  • Aspect Ratio: 16:9
  • Story Text: Migrants and activists raised concerns on Friday (October 23) about policies in Czech detention centers.
    U.N. human rights chief Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein accused the Czech Republic on Thursday (October 22) of committing systematic human rights violations by detaining refugees for up to 90 days, strip-searching them for money to pay for their own detention, and migrants in Prague compared the centres to a "prison" on Friday.
    Amir Tajik left Afghanistan and was held in a Czech detention center and described being held in a "closed camp" for what he said was almost three months. He said authorities took away his phone and money, and charged around 10 euros a day for room and board.
    "I think that I am in prison. For me, I am 15 years old, it was like prison. I couldn't go out, that means that it was a closed camp, 82 days," he said from Prague's main railway station where he was getting ready to leave to relatives in Frankfurt.
    The Czech Republic lies to the north of the main migration routes taking refugees through the Balkans to Germany. It has seen only tiny fraction of the hundreds of thousands passing through Hungary and Austria on their flight from war or poverty.
    Those who come through the Czech Republic have often been detained, some for weeks if authorities do not manage to return them to the country they arrived from. Lengthy detention of those who come through the Czech Republic mostly ends with their release with an order to leave the country, raising questions over the usefulness of the policy.
    "They don't understand why they are there (in the detention centers), they are without money, wearing often just summer clothes because they don't get anything else and they say always the same, that they don't understand that, that it is very bad and that they want just to go through to Germany or other northern countries," said volunteer Jan Skop, who was also at the main railway station, offering help to migrants.
    The Prague government says the detentions are legal. It says it is trying to improve conditions in existing centers and opening new ones. Last week, there were 533 people detained.
    "Czech Republic takes the situation in detention centers very seriously. We are convinced that we are doing our best so that the people live there in the standard legal conditions. Just now we are opening a new center at Drahonice where we will move the male refugees from other centers and we will improve the conditions for families with children and women with children," Interior Minister Milan Chovanec said.
    He also said withholding phones and money from migrants is ordered by law.
    Abdelmushim Hammora and Amina Alsaid came from Syria with their four children, traveling through several countries including Turkey, Greece and Macedonia. They stayed in different centers, but said they considered the one in Czech to be the worse.
    "There were people coming into the center from outside who were leaving then. The children were saying 'We were not allowed in Syria (to go outside), why here, why we can't go outside?' and than they refused to go to the school," Alsaid said.
    "Once our youngest child, who has an asthma, had a serious asthma attack and it took about one hour to get to the doctor, it was not easy," her husband Hammora said.
    The detentions apply to the vast majority of migrants who have either claimed asylum elsewhere or plan to do so only in Germany. Just 1,115 people claimed asylum in the Czech Republic this year, half of them Ukrainians and just 73 Syrians. Some 170,000 irregular migrants entered the EU in September alone, taking the total for the year so far to 710,000. The Czechs have detected just 3,111 since June.
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