Call for Investigation into Brutal Incident at Immigration Detention Centre
The Emancipation Support Committee is absolutely appalled at reports reaching us of a brutal incident at the Immigration Detention Centre. According to the information we received from more than one source sometime around midnight on July 21 police officers, were called into the detention centre which houses undocumented immigrants and launched a violent attack on inmates. Several of the inmates, who come mainly from Caribbean countries and countries on the African continent, were injured and two had to be taken to hospital. One of the most seriously injured was Musa Ibrahim, a Ghanian national, married to a Trinidad and Tobago national. They have a son who is now three years old. The other person who had to be taken to hospital was a Guyanese national, Mr Nurse Shaun.
According to the reports CARICOM nationals detained at the centre were staging protests for a few days at their lengthening detentions for which they could see no justification. The protests were noisy but not violent in any way. Detainees are angry because they are not there for criminal offences. Overstaying the allotted time in a country is not a criminal offence. Voluntary departure to CARICOM countries is an easy option open to Immigration authorities. Even if there was an insistence on deportation, where the responsibility to pay would be on the State, the costs to deport persons to CARICOM countries do not justify indefinite detention. There are even cases where persons have valid return tickets to their countries and they remain incarcerated.
One of the aggravating factors for CARICOM nationals is that they are seeing individuals from outside the CARICOM region come and go very quickly while their detentions continue in violation not only of their individual human rights, but the very spirit of CARICOM agreements. Some of the persons who have left them behind indicated before their release that they would be out shortly because they had paid money to officials for their release. These complaints have also been frequently made by African nationals, the group that consistently endures the longest periods of detention, in a few cases extending beyond three years.
A few days before this incident another similar one occurred. The injured Nigerian national is married to a Trinidad and Tobago national and they have four children. At the time he suffered a head injury his detention had extended for more than two months after his release had been ordered by the Minister in the Ministry of National Security, Honourable Embau Moheni.
The Emancipation Support Committee of Trinidad & Tobago is calling for an immediate and urgent independent investigation into the bloody incident that took place at the Immigration Detention Centre between midnight on July 21 and 12:30 am on July 22. We are also asking the media to do its own investigation which should include seeing and speaking to the persons who were injured.
We are further calling on the Ministry of National Security and the Immigration Authorities to immediately release under Order of Supervision those detainees who are married nationals of Trinidad and Tobago and to initiate processes for their regularization. We are also calling for the release on humanitarian grounds of persons who have been detained for more than six months and the speeding up of deportation of persons detained for shorter periods who do not have family ties in Trinidad and Tobago.
We will address other proposals which we have made for long term resolution of the recurrent crime of lengthy indefinite detention in another release.
Khafra Kambon
Chairman