WORLD REFUGEE DAY
Despite South Africa's international and domestic obligations to provide protection to refugees and asylum seekers, the Department of Home Affairs uses detention as the primary tool for immigration enforcement, including detaining and deporting asylum seekers to countries where they face persecution.
Most detained asylum seekers are held at the Lindela Repatriation Centre in Krugersdorp. The Lindela facility is meant to hold “illegal foreigners” who are awaiting deportation not recognised refugees or asylum seekers awaiting the outcome of their asylum applications. This policy directly contravenes South Africa's international and domestic legal obligations. As a result, Lawyers for Human Rights (LHR) has brought a series of successful court applications this year to prevent home affairs from deporting asylum seekers, and to ensure their release from Lindela. But these applications only represent a small fraction of the asylum seekers detained at Lindela in violation of their legal rights. The applications reflect the systemic problem of the unlawful arrest and detention of asylum seekers who are unable to lodge their applications, or renew their asylum seeker permits – a direct result of the well documented problems with service delivery from the Department of Home Affairs. These asylum seekers are being punished as a direct result of South Africa’s failure to give them adequate protection. LHR echos the call of the International Detention Coalition to governments around the world and calls on the South African government to “stop the use of detention as a migration management tool, and to adhere to international human rights standards which prohibit arbitrary detention and require detention to be a last resort and that alternatives to detention be pursued”. For more information, please contact: Gina SnymanRefugee and Migrant Rights - Detention Monitoring Project Lawyers for Human Rights
Johannesburg
072 180 7524
