• Activists protest Ciudadanos party’s move to privatize migrant centres
• Spain’s CIE internment centres in violation of human rights, refugee norms
Immigrant and refugee activist groups in Spain have protested the introduction of legislation in Congress by centre-right Ciudadanos party to privatize the operations of front-line migrant and asylum processing centres known as Centros de Internamientos de Extranjeros or CIEs, literally “Foreigner Internment Centres.”
The organisations, which include Tanquem els CIE, Plataforma Canarias Libre de CIE, SOS Racismo Madrid y Cies NO Valencia, have said that private security industry interests are behind Ciudadanos registration in Congress last week of a proposal to privatise the operation of the centres under the guise of optimization of resources and creating efficiencies through outsourcing to private companies.
Launching a public awareness campaign under the slogan of “Human Rights Cannot be Privatised,” the organisations say that the Ciudadanos proposal lends itself to the growth of anti-immigrant sentiment and xenophobia in Spain at a time when the Spanish government should be working to place the operation of the CIEs in compliance with international norms on the treatment treatment of migrants and processing of asylum claims.
Both the United Nations High Commission on Refugees (UNHCR/ACNUR) and the European Commission have warned Spain that its treatment of migrants and asylum seekers at CIE facilities located in the country’s North African enclaves of Melilla and Ceuta are not in compliance with international treaties to which Spain is a signatory.
► Read More in Spanish at La Voz de Galicia and Europa Press …
