• Migrants, Asylum Seekers Locked Up in Ukraine

    Scores of migrants who had been arbitrarily detained in Ukraine remain locked up there and are at heightened risk amid the hostilities, including military activity in the vicinity, Human Rights Watch said today. Ukrainian authorities should immediately release migrants and asylum seekers detained due to their migration status and allow them to reach safety in Poland.

    “Migrants and asylum seekers are currently locked up in the middle of a war zone and justifiably terrified,” said Nadia Hardman, refugee and migrant rights researcher at Human Rights Watch. “There is no excuse, over a month into this conflict, for keeping civilians in immigration detention. They should be immediately released and allowed to seek refuge and safety like all other civilians.”

    In early March 2022, Human Rights Watch interviewed four men by telephone who are being held in the Zhuravychi Migrant Accommodation Center in Volyn’ oblast. The detention site is a former military barracks in a pine forest, one hour from Lutsk, a city in northwestern Ukraine. All interviewees said that they had been detained in the months prior to the Russian invasion for irregularly trying to cross the border into Poland.

    The men asked that their nationalities not be disclosed for security reasons but said that people of up to 15 nationalities were being held there, including people from Afghanistan, Algeria, Bangladesh, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Gambia, Ghana, India, Nigeria, Pakistan, and Syria.

    Zhuravychi and two other migrant detention facilities in Ukraine are supported with EU funding. The Global Detention Project has confirmed that the center in Chernihiv has now been emptied but the center in Mykolaiv is operating. Human Rights Watch has been unable to verify whether anyone is still detained there. The men said that at the time of the interviews more than 100 men and an unknown number of women were detained at the Zhuravychi MAC. Some have since been able to negotiate their release, in some cases with help from their embassies. Lighthouse Reports, which is also investigating the issue, has estimated that up to 45 people remain there. It has not been possible to verify this figure or determine whether this includes men and women.

    Three of the men said they were in Ukraine on student visas that had expired. All four had tried to cross the border into Poland but were intercepted by Polish border guard forces and handed directly to Ukrainian border guards. The men said they were sentenced to between 6 and 18 months for crossing the border irregularly after summary court proceedings for which they were not provided legal counsel or given the right to claim asylum.

    Whatever the original basis for their detention, their continued detention at the center is arbitrary and places them at risk of harm from the hostilities, Human Rights Watch said.

    While interviewees said that conditions in the #Zhuravychi detention center were difficult prior to the conflict, the situation significantly deteriorated after February 24. In the days following the Russian invasion, they said, members of the Ukrainian military moved into the center. The detention center guards moved all migrant and asylum seekers into one of the two buildings in the complex, freeing the second building for Ukrainian soldiers.

    A video, verified and analyzed by Human Rights Watch, shows scores of Ukrainian soldiers standing in the courtyard of the Zhuravychi MAC, corroborating the accounts that the Ukrainian military is actively using the site. Another video, also verified by Human Rights Watch, shows a military vehicle slowly driving on the road outside the detention center. Recorded from the same location, a second video shows a group of approximately 30 men in camouflage uniforms walking on the same road and turning into the compound next door.

    On or around the date after the full-scale invasion, the people interviewed said a group of detainees gathered in the yard of the detention center near the gate to protest the conditions and asked to be allowed leave to go to the Polish border.

    The guards refused to open the gate and instead forcibly quelled the protest and beat the detainees with their batons, they said. Human Rights Watch analyzed a video that appears to show the aftermath of the protest: a group of men crowd around an unconscious man lying on the ground. People interviewed said that a guard had punched him. A group of guards are also visible in the video, in black uniforms standing near the gate.

    “We came out to peacefully protest,” one of those interviewed said. “We want to go. We are terrified.… We tried to walk towards the gate … and after we were marching towards the gate.… They beat us. It was terrible. Some of my friends were injured.”

    Interviewees said that guards said they could leave Zhuravychi if they joined the Ukrainian war effort and added they would all immediately be granted Ukrainian citizenship and documentation. They said that no one accepted the offer.

    On March 18, five men and one woman were released when officials from their embassy intervened and facilitated their evacuation and safe travel to the border with Poland. Ukraine should release all migrants and asylum seekers detained at the Zhuravychi detention center and facilitate their safe travel to the Polish border, Human Rights Watch said.

    The European Union (EU) has long funded Ukraine’s border control and migration management programs and funded the International Center for Migration Policy Development to construct the perimeter security systems at Zhuravychi MAC. The core of the EU’s strategy has been to stop the flow of migrants and asylum seekers into the EU by shifting the burden and responsibility for migrants and refugees to countries neighboring the EU, in this case Ukraine. Now that Ukraine has become a war zone, the EU should do all it can to secure the release and safe passage of people detained in Ukraine because of their migration status. United Nations agencies and other international actors should support this call to release civilians at Zhuravychi and any other operational migrant detention centers and provide assistance where relevant.

    “There is so much suffering in Ukraine right now and so many civilians who still need to reach safety and refuge,” Hardman said. “Efforts to help people flee Ukraine should include foreigners locked up in immigration detention centers.”

    https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/04/04/migrants-asylum-seekers-locked-ukraine
    #Ukraine #réfugiés #migrations #asile #détention_administrative #rétention #emprisonnement

    • Migrants trapped in Ukrainian detention center while war rages on

      Several dozen irregular migrants were reportedly trapped in a detention center in northwestern Ukraine weeks into the Russian invasion, an investigation by several media outlets found. An unconfirmed number of migrants appear to remain in the EU-funded facility, from where migrants are usually deported.

      Imagine you are detained without being accused of a crime and wait to be deported to somewhere while an invading army bombs the neighboring town. This horrific scenario has been the reality for scores of migrants in northwestern Ukraine for weeks.

      A joint investigation between Dutch non-profit Lighthouse Reports, which specializes on transnational investigations, Al Jazeera and German publication Der Spiegel found that over five weeks after the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Afghani, Pakistani, Indian, Sudanese and Bangladeshi migrants were still detained in a EU-funded detention center near the northwestern Ukrainian city of #Lutsk.

      Although several people were recently released with the support of their embassies, Der Spiegel reported there were still dozens of who remained there at the end of March.

      According to the wife of one detainee who was released last week, the detention center offered no air raid shelter. Moreover, guards “ran down the street when the siren sounded,” both Der Spiegel and Al Jazeera reported.

      “The guards took away the detainees’ phones,” the woman told reporters. She also said that power outlets in the cells were no longer working and the whole situation was extremely dangerous. In fact, the nearby city of Lutsk has repeatedly come under attack since March 12.

      According to the investigation, the Zhuravychi Migrant Accommodation Centre is located in a pine forest in the Volyn region, near the Belarusian border. Constructed in 1961 as an army barracks, the facility was converted into a migrant detention center in 2007 with EU funds, Al Jazeera reported.

      Reporters involved in the investigation spoke with recently released detainees’ relatives. They also analyzed photos and documents, which “verified the detainees’ presence in Ukraine before being placed in the center,” according to Al Jazeera.
      Calls for release of detainees

      Some detainees have been released since the beginning of the Russian invasion, including several Ethiopian citizens and an Afghan family, Al Jazeera reported. But politicians and NGOs have voice fear over those who remain in the Zhuravychi Migrant Accommodation Center.

      “It is extremely concerning that migrants and refugees are still locked up in detention centers in war zones, with the risk of being attacked without any possibility to flee,” Tineke Strik, a Dutch member of the European Parliament from the Greens/EFA Group told reporters involved in the investigation.

      Human Rights Watch (HRW) also decried the ongoing detention of migrants at the facility during the war. In a report published on Monday (April 4), HRW said its staff interviewed four men by telephone who are being held in that Zhuravychi in early March. According to HRW, all four men said they had been detained in the months prior to the Russian invasion for irregularly trying to cross the border into Poland.

      “Migrants and asylum seekers are currently locked up in the middle of a war zone and justifiably terrified,” said Nadia Hardman, a refugee and migrant rights researcher with HRW. “There is no excuse, over a month into this conflict, for keeping civilians in immigration detention. They should be immediately released and allowed to seek refuge and safety like all other civilians.”

      According to the four interviewees, people from Afghanistan, Algeria, Bangladesh, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Gambia, Ghana, India, Nigeria, Pakistan, Syria and four other nationalities were being held at the facility.

      Michael Flynn from the Global Detention Project told Der Spiegel that the Geneva Conventions (not to be confused with the Geneva Refugee Convention) “obliges all warring parties to protect civilians under their control from the dangers of the conflict.” He stressed that the detainees needed to be released as soon as possible.
      The EU’s bouncer

      According to the investigation, the European Union has funded at least three detention centers in Ukraine “for years,” effectively making the non-EU country a gatekeeper. The facility in question near Lutsk that’s apparently still in operation received EU support “to confine asylum seekers, many of them pushed back from the EU,” according to Lighthouse Reports.

      Der Spiegel reported that up to 150 foreigners were detained in the facility last year. Most of them tried in vain to reach the European Union irregularly and have to stay in deportation detention for up to 18 months.

      Since the turn of the millennium, according to Der Spiegel, the EU has invested more than €30 million in three detention centers.

      At the facility in Zhuravychi, Der Spiegel reported, the EU provided €1.7 million for electronic door locks and protection elements on the windows. While the EU called it an “accommodation”, Der Spiegel said was a refugee prison in reality.

      The European Commission did not respond to a request for comment about the facility and the detained migrants, Al Jazeera said. Ukrainian authorities also did not answer any questions.

      In early March, InfoMigrants talked to several Bangladeshi migrants who had been given deportation orders and were stuck inside detention centers, including in said Zhuravychi Migrant Accommodation Centre. Around a hundred migrants were staying there back then, according to Bangladeshi and Indian citizens detained there. They were released a few days later.

      “Russia has been particularly bombing military bases. That’s why we have been living in constant fear of getting bombed,” Riadh Malik, a Bangladeshi migrant told InfoMigrants. According to the New York Times, the military airfield in Lutsk was bombed on March 11.

      https://www.infomigrants.net/en/post/39678/migrants-trapped-in-ukrainian-detention-center-while-war-rages-on

    • Immigration Detention amidst War: The Case of Ukraine’s Volyn Detention Centre

      A Global Detention Project Special Report

      In early March, shortly into Russia’s war on Ukraine, the Global Detention Project (GDP) began receiving email messages and videos from individuals claiming to know people who remained trapped in an immigration detention centre inside Ukraine, even as the war approached. We also received messages from a representative of the humanitarian group Alight based in Poland, who said that they too were receiving messages from detainees at Volyn, as well as identity documents, photos, and videos.

      The information we received indicated that there were several dozen detainees still at the Volyn detention centre (formally, “#Volyn_PTPI,” but also referred to as the “#Zhuravychi_Migrant_Accommodation_Centre”), including people from Pakistan, India, Eritrea, Sudan, Afghanistan, among other countries. They had grown particularly desperate after the start of the war and had held a demonstration to demand their release when the nearby town was shelled, which reportedly was violently broken up by detention centre guards.

      The GDP located a webpage on the official website of Ukraine’s State Secretariat of Migration that provided confirmation of the operational status of the Volyn facility as well as of two others. Although the official webpage was subsequently taken down, as of late March it continued to indicate that there were three operational migration-related detention centres in Ukraine, called Temporary Stay for Foreigners or #PTPI (Пункти тимчасового перебування іноземців та осіб без громадянства): Volyn PTPI (#Zhuravychi); #Chernihiv PTPI; and #Nikolaev PTPI (also referred to as the Mykolaiv detention centre).

      We learned that the Chernihiv PTPI, located north of Kyiv, was emptied shortly after the start of the war. However, as of the end of March 2022, it appeared that both the Volyn PTPI and Nikolaev PTPI remained operational and were holding detainees. We understood that the situation at the detention centres had been brought to the attention of relevant authorities in Ukraine and that the embassies of at least some of the detainees—including India—had begun arranging the removal of their nationals. Detainees from some countries, however, reportedly indicated that they did not want assistance from their embassies because they did not wish to return and were seeking asylum.

      In our communications and reporting on this situation, including on social media and through direct outreach to officials and media outlets, the GDP consistently called for the release of all migrants trapped in detention centres in Ukraine and for international efforts to assist migrants to seek safety. We highlighted important international legal standards that underscore the necessity of releasing detainees in administrative detention in situations of ongoing warfare. Important among these is Additional Protocol 1, Article 58C, of the Geneva Conventions, which requires all parties to a conflict to take necessary measures to protect civilians under their control from the effects of the war.

      We also pointed to relevant human rights standards pertaining to administrative detention. For example, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, in their seminal Revised Deliberation No. 5 on the deprivation of liberty of migrants, conclude that in “instances when the obstacle for identifying or removal of persons in an irregular situation from the territory is not attributable to them … rendering expulsion impossible … the detainee must be released to avoid potentially indefinite detention from occurring, which would be arbitrary.” Similarly, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has repeatedly found that when the purpose of such detention is no longer possible, detainees must be released (see ECHR, “Guide on Article 5 of the European Convention on Human Rights: Right to Liberty and Security,” paragraph 149.).

      In April, a consortium of press outlets—including Lighthouse Reports, Al Jazeera English, and Der Spiegel—jointly undertook an investigation into migrants trapped in detention in Ukraine and published separate reports simultaneously on 4 April. Human Rights Watch (HRW) also published their own report on 4 April, which called on authorities to immediately release the detainees. All these reports cited information provided by the GDP and interviewed GDP staff.

      HRW reported that they had spoken to some of the detainees at Volyn (Zhuravychi) and were able to confirm numerous details, including that “people of up to 15 nationalities were being held there, including people from Afghanistan, Algeria, Bangladesh, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Gambia, Ghana, India, Nigeria, Pakistan, and Syria.” According to HRW, the detainees claimed to have “been detained in the months prior to the Russian invasion for irregularly trying to cross the border into Poland.” They said that there were more than 100 men and women at the facility, though according to Lighthouse Reports only an estimated 45 people remained at the centre as of 21 March.

      The interviewees said that conditions at the detention centre deteriorated after 24 February when members of the Ukrainian military moved into the centre and guards relocated the detainees to one of the two buildings in the complex, freeing the second building for the soldiers. When detainees protested and demanded to be released, the guards refused, forcibly putting an end to the protest and beating detainees. Some detainees claimed to have been told that they could leave the centre if they agreed to fight alongside the Ukrainian military, which they refused.

      An issue addressed in many of these reports is the EU’s role in financing immigration detention centres in Ukraine, which the GDP had previously noted in a report about Ukraine in 2012. According to that report, “In 2011, 30 million Euros were allocated to build nine new detention centres in Ukraine. According to the EU delegation to Ukraine, this project will ‘enable’ the application of the EU-Ukraine readmission by providing detention space for ‘readmitted’ migrants sent back to Ukraine from EU countries.”

      In its report on the situation, Al Jazeera quoted Niamh Ní Bhriain of the Transnational Institute, who said that the EU had allocated 1.7 million euros ($1.8m) for the securitisation of the Volyn centre in 2009. She added, “The EU drove the policies and funded the infrastructure which sees up to 45 people being detained today inside this facility in Ukraine and therefore it must call on Ukraine to immediately release those being held and guarantee them the same protection inside the EU as others fleeing the same war.”

      Efforts to get clarity on EU financing from officials in Brussels were stymied by lack of responsiveness on the part of EU officials. According to Al Jazeera, “The European Commission did not answer questions from Al Jazeera regarding its operation and whether there were plans to help evacuate any remaining people. Ukrainian authorities also did not respond to a request for comment.” The Guardian also reported in mid-April they had “approached the Zhuravychi detention facility and the Ukrainian authorities for comment” but had yet to receive a response as of 12 April.

      However, on 5 April, two MEPs, Tineke Strik and Erik Marquardt, raised the issue during a joint session of the European Parliament’s Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice, and Home Affairs (LIBE) and the Committee on Development (DEVE). The MEPs urged the EU to take steps to assist the release of the detainees.

      In mid-April, reports emerged that some detainees who had been released from the Volyn PTPI in Zhuravychi were later re-detained in Poland. In its 14 April report, The Guardian reported that “some of those that were released from the centre in the first few days of the war are now being held in a detention centre in Poland, after they were arrested attempting to cross the Polish border, but these claims could not be verified.” On 22 April, Lighthouse Reports cited Tigrayan diaspora representatives as saying that two former detainees at the facility were refugees fleeing Ethiopia’s war in the region, where human rights groups report evidence of a campaign of ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. Despite being provided documents by Ukraine stipulating that they were stateless persons and being promised safe passage, Polish border guards detained the pair, arguing that there was an “extreme probability of escape.”

      Separately, human rights campaigners following the case informed the GDP in late April that they had evidence of immigration detainees still being locked up in Ukraine’s detention centres, including in particular the Nikolaev (Mykolaiv) PTPI.

      The GDP continues to call for the release of all migrants detained in Ukraine during ongoing warfare and for international efforts to help detainees to find safety, in accordance with international humanitarian and human rights law. Recognizing the huge efforts Poland is making to assist refugees from Ukraine, we nevertheless call on the Polish government to treat all people fleeing Ukraine equally and without discrimination based on race, nationality, or ethnic origin. Everyone fleeing the conflict in Ukraine is entitled to international protection and assistance and no one should be detained on arrival in Poland.

      https://www.globaldetentionproject.org/immigration-detention-amidst-war-the-case-of-ukraines-volyn-