The U.N. Committee against Torture, which monitors governments' compliance with the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, will review Spain's fourth periodic report on November 12 and 13, 2002.
"Coping with an immigration influx does not give Spain license to disregard migrants' basic human rights," said Elizabeth Andersen, executive director of Human Rights Watch's Europe and Central Asia division. "The Spanish government needs to hear from the Committee against Torture that it's time to take meaningful steps to address these persistent, worsening abuses."
In a letter to the Committee against Torture, Human Rights Watch urged the international experts to question the Spanish government about its treatment of migrants. Human Rights Watch expressed particular concern about conditions in immigration detention and in residential centers for migrant children that amount to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment and about the manner in which repatriation and expulsion proceedings are carried out.
The Human Rights Watch letter details severely substandard conditions of detention for migrants and asylum seekers in Fuerteventura on the Canary Islands as well as serious procedural rights violations in the course of government efforts to return migrants to the countries from which they have come. As a result, Human Rights Watch has found, migrants are often prevented from accessing asylum procedures as well as complaints mechanisms in cases of ill-treatment or discrimination.
Human Rights Watch also raised the issue of the widespread abuse of unaccompanied migrant children in the two Spanish cities in North Africa, Ceuta and Melilla.
Human Rights Watch has conducted research on the treatment of migrants in Spain in July, October and November 2001, and March, May and October 2002. Human Rights Watch has published its findings in three recent reports on the treatment of migrants in Spain: The Other Face of the Canary Islands: Rights Violations Against Migrants and Asylum Seekers (February 2002); Nowhere to Turn: State Abuses of Unaccompanied Migrant Children by Spain and Morocco (May 2002); and Discretion Without Bounds: The Arbitrary Implementation of Spanish Immigration Law (July 2002). Further information about the treatment of migrants in Europe and about EU immigration policy is available at http://www.hrw.org/campaigns/migrants/.
The Human Rights Watch letter states that the conditions detailed in its recent reports persist in Spain today. "Unfortunately, we have to report to the Committee that the government has largely neglected the concerns we identified," Andersen said. "We hope that the Committee's review will raise the profile of these serious abuses and spur the government into action."
