• New report condemns Spain’s treatment of migrants at N. African centres
• Summary explusions, police abuse, overcrowding violate international accords
Amnistía Internacional España, the Spanish section of global human-rights campaigning organisation Amnesty International, has issued a scathing report on conditions at CETI immigrant detention centres in Spain’s North African enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla, condemning what it says are summary expulsions, police abuse and overcrowding in violation of United Nations and European accords on immigrant treatment and human rights.
In its report, titled EN TIERRA DE NADIE: La situación de las personas refugiadas y migrantes en Ceuta y Melilla (‘IN NO MAN’S LAND: The situation of refugees and migrants in Ceuta and Melilla’), Amnesty says refugees and political asylum seekers detained in the two centres are discriminated against on the basis of nationality and that no special attention is given to the needs of particularly vulnerable migrants, including the physically and mentally disabled, migrant women who are victimised by gangs of sex-traffickers or LGBT asylum seekers, fleeing persecution in their home countries.
According to Amnesty, the two North African centres operated on Spanish territory at Ceuta and Melilla are virtually closed to anyone who does not have Syrian nationality. The report also says that asylum seekers asking for protection are not provided adequate information on how to make their claims, while an “arbitrary system of sanctions” against migrants lead to summary group expulsions back into Moroccan territory, regardless of the claimants’ nationality.
► Read More in Spanish at 20minutos and Europa Press …
► Read More in English at The Local …
► Read Summary of Report in Spanish at Amnesty Press Release, here …
