January 31, 2012 Ukraine
Since 6 January, 58 Somalis (13 women, including 7 minors, and 45 men, including 17 minors) who are detained in Zhuravychi detention centre near Lutsk are on hunger strike. On 29/1, they were subsequently attacked by riot police who forcefully took them to the dining room to take pictures of the refugees eating.
The hunger striking refugees demand that:
1) Somali asylum seekers are granted asylum status in Ukraine.
2) They are released from detention.
3) Asylum seekers are provided with documents so they cannot be arrested.
4) There is an end to the police harassment of asylum seekers.
5) No asylum seeker is to face re-arrest after a period of detention.
The detention centre where the Somali and other refugees are kept was set up in 2008 with funds from the EU, € 7.2 million from the ‘Capacity Building in Migration Management’ programme (CBMM), and under IOM management. Another ten EU-funded detention centres are planned (Delegation of the European Union to Ukraine 2010).
European Commission: ‘The EU is supporting Ukraine's efforts to restructure its migration management approach that includes the operational framework related to the detention of irregular migrants’ (see http://ec.europa.eu/europeaid/documents/case-studies/ukraine_cbmm_en.pdf).
The detention centre is situated 45 kilometres outside of the remote city of Lutsk in northwestern Ukraine. It has a capacity of 180 detainees, though in January 2011 there were about 130 detainees. Last year, Ukraine amended its immigration law allowing people to be kept in detention for 12 months; they can be detained repeatedly which de facto amounts to indefinite detention. As it seems men and women, unaccompanied minors or whole families including women, pregnant or with children are all detained indiscriminately. One of the hunger strikers is already detained for the fifth time, altogether for over two years now. Notably those who do not or cannot pay bribes to the police will be detained (see BMPU report on Corruption in the asylum and detention system in Ukraine, 2012). Recognition rates of asylum applications vary between zero and three percent, notably Somalis, in particular in the Lutsk district are not normally accepted but refused (see UNHCR press release, 2012). Detainees do not normally have access to lawyers and none of the detainees in Lutsk has one. Otherwise detainees report insufficient nutrition, lack of medical care and other social services (see Jesuit Refugee Service, 2011) and probably infectious skin diseases. It has been widely and internationally agreed by UNHCR, IOM, ICMPD and others that Ukraine does not live up to its obligations under international law and is thus not a safe country for refugees.
Legally, such detention is an administrative measure and meant to facilitate deportation. However, these practices amount to a violation of article 31, Geneva Refugee Convention prohibiting imposing penalties on refugees for their illegal entry or presence, and article 33, prohibiting refoulement. The European Court of Human Rights has already in June 2011 ruled that any native of Somalia needs international protection and that their return to Mogadishu would constitute a violation of Article 3 of the Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (prohibition of torture). Thus, such detention de fact is a kind of punishment for coming to Ukraine or for trying to move on to the EU. They are a direct expression of the migration politics of the EU, notably the externalization of migration control, meaning that the paths to the EU are controlled by the countries in the neighbourhood of the EU and that migrants and refugees on their way west are prevented from doing so by any means necessary, as it seems no matter whether this includes violations of refugee, children or human rights.
http://media.bordermonitoring-ukraine.eu/2012/01/23/57-somalis-went-on-…
http://franckduvell.posterous.com/
Background
For several years, Somalis have been using Ukraine as a transit route from Somalia via Russia to the EU, not in large numbers but a few hundred each year. Once in the EU, they try and continue they journeys to the western countries. There, they usually apply for asylum knowing that it is only there that they stand a chance of being recognised. For instance, in Germany, in 2010, 2,466 Somalis had applied for asylum, around 5 percent of the total. The recognition rate for Somalis was 41.4 percent, three times more than the national average; another 10 percent were granted subsidiary protection (Bundesministerium des Inneren, 2011, see http://www.bmi.bund.de/SharedDocs/Pressemitteilungen/DE/2011/01/asylzah…). This demonstrated that in Germany the chances to be accepted as refugee are forty times higher than in Ukraine. There thus is a very obvious reason for Somali refugees to continue their journey to, for instance, the EU.
In 2010 and 2011, Ukrainian authorities are reported to rounding up migrants, in Kyiv they ‘harass merchants at Troyeshchyna market; racism, corruption seen’ notably of ‘non-Slavik appearance’ (Kyiv Post, 5/11/2010) and in Kharkiv they ‘carry out raids at the markets and railway stations of the city. People with exotic appearance are checked their documents and established whether they stay in Ukraine legally’ (Objective TV, 29/6/2011). The authorities also specifically target Somalis, mostly in the city of Vinnitsa. For instance, it was reported that ‘30 migrants from Somalia were detained in Vinnitsa’ even though it was acknowledged that they ‘came to Vinnitsa aiming at a refugee status’ (Korrespondent, 23/12/2011).
There is another dimension to the Ukrainian onslaught on Somali refugees. For years, the mass media portrays Somalis as pirates, like ‘A group of Somali “pirates” attacked the border in Transcarpathia’ (UA Reporter, 22/10/2010) or ‘Resident from Uzhgorod was arrested together with the group of “Somali pirates” in Mukachevo’ (UA Reporter, 7/12/2011). This is because many of the ships abducted by often Puntland-based pirates off the coast of Somalia are manned by Ukrainian sailors (e.g. Faina, 2008; Ariana, Maran Centaurus, 2009; Lugela, Asian Glory, Eleni P, Marida Marguerite, 2010; Beluga, Blida, Montecristo, 2011). Whilst these crimes and the suffering of the affected families is reported in Ukrainian media no distinction is made between pirates and refugees. Thereby, the issue of piracy off the coast of Somalia is used to stereotype Somali refugees as criminals and thus not welcomed.
Source: All information, if not stated otherwise, was retrieved from Border Monitoring Project Ukraine (BMPU), http://media.bordermonitoring-ukraine.eu/