Four years on from hideous death of Ukrainian job-seeker, little appears to have improved
Portugal’s Ordem dos Advogados (Bar Association) has visited the temporary installation centre at Lisbon airport (where four years ago, a Ukrainian job seeker was beaten to death by border guards) to find “poor reception conditions“, and “inhumane” treatment persist.
According to a report by Lusa news agency, Fernando de Almeida Pinheiro, leading the visit by the Order’s Human Rights Commission said she wasn’t surprised by the conditions she found, given the complaints on human rights violations that the Order has received, some of which have even been accompanied by videos.
“What we found inside, above all, was poor conditions to be able to receive people when there are peaks of passengers at this airport,” she told reporters, noting that the difficult situation was to be expected given the transfer of competencies from the now defunct Immigration and Borders Service (SEF) to the Public Security Police (PSP), with new powers and a period of adaptation.
The obligation to stay in the international area of the airport for citizens who do not obtain authorisation to enter national territory, in a space that has a total capacity for a maximum of 22 people, means that during peak periods there are people sleeping on the floor, without conditions, sometimes for days, and without a decent space for personal hygiene.
According to Pinheiro, there have been reports of people spending seven days in these conditions.
“This is inhumane, this is not acceptable. Many of these people have religious beliefs that require personal hygiene, even to be able to say their prayers, and this is a violation of their human rights,” she stressed, defending the need to “find a space where people can be received with dignity”.
Fernanda de Almeida Pinheiro said that temporary beds had been set up with screens separating them, guaranteeing a minimum of privacy for detained citizens, but even so, “these are not ways of receiving people” – adding that she had found “people who are very aware” of the problem posed by the lack of conditions at the airport’s temporary detention centre (full name: Espaço Equiparado a Centro de Instalação Temporária, or EECIT).
She emphasised Portugal’s responsibility to receive people with decent conditions, suggesting that “places be found in institutions or that protocols be established with Lisbon City Council”.
Pinheiro also denounced the poor working conditions of lawyers who provide legal advice to detainees, complicating the defence of their rights even further.
“There needs to be better legal counselling”, she explained. “Several of the asylum seekers here told us that they had signed a document saying that they were giving up legal services, but in reality, they were not aware that they were giving up legal advice.
“It’s important that these people know what their rights are and what measures they can take in their defence when there is a decision to refuse them entry into national territory.”
Fernanda de Almeida Pinheiro also emphasised the low literacy levels of many of these citizens who “even with an interpreter don’t understand what they are being told” since sometimes they don’t even know how to read.
The fact that these kind of complaints come a full four years since border guards were jailed for their part in the death of a job-seeking Ukrainian at the centre; since the warnings by the country’s Ombudsman that reception conditions and practices had to change – and since the State was ordered to pay roughly over €800,000 euros in damages because of this incident, is all the more perplexing. Why haven’t conditions improved? ND
Source material: LUSA
