International human rights lawyer and founder of Freedom Imaginaries Malene Alleyne says her organisation will be appealing the Jamaican Government’s rejection of asylum applications by 37 Haitian refugees which the entity believes shows ‘blatant’ disregard for the UN Refugee Agency’s call to states in the region to suspend forced return of Haitians to their homeland.
Speaking with the Jamaica Observer on Wednesday, Alleyne said Freedom Imaginaries is at odds with the way the asylum applications were handled by the Ministry of National Security.
“This decision comes at a point where not only has the crisis deteriorated but UN bodies have been urging states to suspend forced returns and so my concern is that the decision seems to blatantly disregard UN non-return advisories and the expertise of people on the ground,” the advocate said.
“We are going to engage the appeal procedure; there is an appeal before the minister of national security which must be done within a certain time frame and once we exhaust that, there is an opportunity to go before a refugee review body and we plan to exhaust that as well. More generally, we will be taking all measures necessary to protect the rights of the Haitians,” Alleyne told the Observer.
“Our position is that the UN has made it clear that the situation in Haiti is catastrophic and is not conducive to forced return and so the UN has called upon states to suspend the forced return of Haitians to Haiti and to ensure that they have access to protection services, and so following UN non-return advisories and also following the Refugee Convention which prohibits returning persons to a country where they could face persecution, it’s very important that we exhaust the remedies at their disposal while engaging with the Government to find durable solutions.” she stated.
According to Alleyne, the reasons provided by the Jamaican Government for refusing the Haitian’s asylum do not pass muster.
“Our position is that every decision maker must give reasons for their decisions that could adversely affect human rights and the ministry, I think, has a responsibility to provide adequate and sufficient reasons. The reasons provided, we will challenge through the appropriate procedures but I will say for now, we do not believe that there were sufficient reasons and we have always challenged the lack of due process in the procedure,” she stated.
According to Alleyne, the applicants were not provided with an opportunity to be heard during the application.
“They were not even heard by the eligibility committee that was convened to consider their application. The eligibility committee has not heard from one single applicant about the circumstances leading to their decision to flee Haiti. All the eligibility committee did, as far as we are aware, is consider the documents prepared by immigration officials based on a screening interview that was done in which attorneys could not participate or ask questions. We remain very, very concerned about due process issues in the procedure but we will exhaust all remedies at our disposal,” she told the Observer.
She said the Haitians were given the disappointing news at 9:00 on Tuesday night (February 27) by two immigration officials accompanied by an interpreter. She said the Haitians, who could not read the letters delivered to them after being told the contents, were crestfallen.
“The letters were in English and French and neither of those languages is the language spoken by the Haitians and so unfortunately, they stood with those letters in their hands which they could not read and then the interpreter had to explain. Their reaction is one of extreme disappointment because they know what they are fleeing in Haiti. The situations in Haiti is extremely catastrophic and even since coming to Jamaica, their family members are being killed in very tragic and brutal circumstances. The situation in Haiti has deteriorated since they came,” Alleyne said further.
The group of eight children and 29 adults, which is being housed at a multi-complex campground in Robins Bay, Portland, under the care of the Red Cross, entered Jamaica illegally by boat last year. One woman has since given birth the Observer was reliably informed.
The attorney, in the meantime, pointed out that attention will be paid to the treatment of the children involved.
Efforts by the Observer to get comments from National Security Minister Dr Horace Chang and the Jamaica Red Cross on the development were unsuccessful.
