LHR launches report on monitoring immigration detention in South Africa

Lawyers for Human Rights (LHR) today launched a report on monitoring immigration detention in South Africa highlighting the  serious human rights concerns in South Africa's immigration detention facilities, in particular the privately operated facility at Lindela in Krugersdorp and the detention centre operated by the SAPS in Musina.

While prisons in South Africa fall under the monitoring supervision of the Judge-Inspector of Prisons,  the management of the Lindela Repatriation Centre is contracted to a private company, Bosasa Holdings, which is responsible for the day-to-day operations of the facility.  The Department of Home Affairs, however, consistently evades responsibility for the conditions and treatment of detainees due to this subcontracting agreement.  Moreover, the Immigration Act makes no provision for the manner in which detention centres should be administered, enabling Bosasa to operate free of any monitoring or oversight. Reports of routine violence, corruption and bribery, insufficient food, overcrowding, lack of reading and writing materials, denial of access to medical care, and indefinite detentions without judicial review continue. Bona fide asylum seekers and refugees detained at Lindela also have little recourse to the legal protections afforded to them in law and their asylum claims are often met with indifference by immigration officials at Lindela. Without the assistance private attorneys or NGOs they may be subjected to indefinite detention and deportation to the countries they fled from, seeking political asylum.

The detention facility in Musina is a police-operated detention centre operated within a military compound for so-called "illegal foreigners" who are arrested en masse in the Musina area by the SAPS and SANDF.  The effect of this net-widening operation is that many legitimate refugees and asylum seekers are also detained and deported from this facility. While the Immigration Act demands that deportations must always be conducted under the control of Immigration Officers under the Department of Home Affairs, SGM is largely run by the Musina police, with little regard for the protections afforded to asylum seekers in terms of the Refugees Act.

Hundreds of men, women and children are deported from the facility on a daily basis, in some cases, regardless of whether they have valid asylum claims, or in many circumstances are even documented. Apart from overseeing deportations, the Department of Home Affairs exerts no control over the facility.

Despite the human rights violations of the people detained at this facility where the conditions of detention are inhumane and the treatment of the detainees is criminal, the manner of the blanket deportations which fail to distinguish asylum seekers leads to the refoulment of refugees and asylum seekers to countries where their lives are at risk, contrary to the South African Refugees Act and South Africa's obligations under international law.

LHR recommends the reformulation of immigration policy toward a more accommodating view of enforcement that will encourage the use of border posts while discouraging irregular movement across the border, establishing an independent monitoring body to oversee compliance with arrest and detention procedures and to verify the status of those detained as illegal foreigners; to address cases of abuse and improve conditions at the Lindela and Musina detention centres and put mechanisms in place to ensure that detainees are not held in indefinite detention without legal process or subject to any form of detention that may amount to cruel and unusual treatment. 

LHR supports the call being made by 'The Elders' to stop deportations to Zimbabwe; to call on SADC leaders to acknowledge the seriousness of the refugee crisis in the region; and to urge SADC leaders to play a greater role in the process of transition to an inclusive government in Zimbabwe.

Lawyers for Human Rights further calls for the South African government to recognise the humanitarian crisis in Zimbabwe; to release Zimbabweans from immigration detention and to issue discretionary humanitarian permits to allow Zimbabweans to remain in the country for as long as the humanitarian crisis continues.

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For more information, please contact:

Sabelo Sibanda                                                           Gina Snyman

Lawyers for Human Rights                                         Lawyers for Human Rights

Musina                                                                         Johannesburg

074 634 3761                                                              072 180 7524