Poland: Migrant detention centres
01 November 1996
Investigations by a Polish NGO showed that there are presently around 500 people held in detention centres in Poland. About 400 people arrested during police raids in September and 100 persons have been deported by the German border police in accordance with the German-Polish readmission agreement. The German-based organisation Forschungsgesellschaft Flucht und Migration (FFM) visited three detention centres (Konin, Pila and Elblag) in Poland in October. They interviewed all 122 detainees, all men from South-East Asian countries (Bangladesh, Afghanistan, India, Sri Lanka, except for one man from Liberia).
According to the Polish police authorities, only 6 out of the 122 detainees have applied for political asylum. However, all the men believed that they had applied for asylum during the 10-15 minutes long investigations by the state prosecutor after their arrests. The interpreters present at the investigations explained to the refugees that the document - written in Polish - they were asked to sign is an asylum application. In fact, they signed the order to place them in remand pending deportation. All the men signed this document which means that they will be deported to their countries of origin or neighbouring third countries within 90 days of their arrest. As all the detainees in the three deportation centres gave similar detailed statements it looks as if the refugees have been deceived by the state authorities. None of the detainees was aware of the fact that they were on remand pending deportation. Nobody had informed them about their rights and they have had no contact with support organisations.
Two weeks after the September raids, the Interior Ministers of Poland and the Ukraine signed an agreement on cross border cooperation (4.10.96) which has been presented to the Polish public as an anti-migration convention. The Ukraine has not signed the Geneva Refugee Convention nor is the country recognized as a "safe third country". Some of the refugees arrested in the raids have been deported to the Ukraine where they can no longer be traced. It is believed that they are Iraqi Kurds.
Besides the state prosecutor, the competent authority for the refugee's situation is the Refugee and Migration Office in Warsaw. This office decides on asylum applications and organises deportations. Until the visit of FFM, no representative of the Refugee and Migration Office had contacted the detainees. The director of the office announced on 7 November that due to the seriousness of the accusations an inquiry has been launched but refused to give any further information. Nor had the office of the UNHCR in Warsaw contacted the refugees in the detention centres. Most of the letters from the refugees to the UNHCR in Warsaw have been returned because of an incomplete address. As a first reaction to the visit to the detention centres by FFM, the Polish authorities suspended all visits to the refugees. Neither the UNHCR nor human rights organisations can now interview the refugees in order to assess their situation. According to the UNHCR, it has not received one letter from detention centres through the normal postal delivery service (7.11.96). Further research in Poland during recent months has shown that the Polish authorities seem to treat refugees differently according to colour and origin. If people from south-eastern Europe are registered as "illegally resident", they get "only" a request to leave the country stamped into their passport or in the case of a deportation from Germany they may be sentenced to several months imprisonment (see Statewatch, vol 6 no 4). People from south-east Asia are taken straight into detention centres when registered as illegally resident.
A group of 21 refugees, arrested by the German border police near Frankfurt/Oder reported that the police officers behaved in a very aggressive way. The refugees were asked several times to sign papers they could not read, and when they refused to do so,