by Rick Lowe
The Tribune of Tuesday, February 24, 2009 headlined another horror story at the Carmichael Road Detention Centre. It's allegedly so bad there that a representative of a Cuban American Human Rights organisation said that "Without hesitation I can say this is a concentration camp…"
Even if we are prepared to accept that the illegal immigrants housed there have broken the law, are they less than human?
It's bad enough that our prison is reported to be a hell hole, but for a detention centre, where people are housed while awaiting deportation to be compared to a Nazi Concentration Camp should embarrass every political and church leader throughout our archipelago.
Knowing that the eyes of the international community are upon our little country, one would think that the government would solve the problems at the detention centre once and for all starting with faster processing.
If we are simply sending people back to their home country surely there is no need for them to be here for months on end?
Okay, I'll grant that some cases are more complicated and will take time, but I don't buy that those cases should take months either. Weeks maybe, but months?
Can anyone tell me which Ministry of Government this falls under (National Security?) and if there is a board appointed to oversee the detention centre incorporating religious and community leaders?
I was there in 1998, I was just a kid. The people here are physically and psychologically abused. The living conditions are…well they are deplorable. The meager bits of food had worms, bathrooms didn’t have electricity, nor doors! People were crammed together in very small rooms. To this day I still recall my experience there as a child, and the psychological damage I suffered. People were physically abused by the guards had the advantage with their weapons. I was returned to Cuba along with my mother sometime on May 1998.