Latest update April 25th, 2024 12:59 AM
Sep 13, 2016 News
The reported ill-treatment of Guyanese, Annecia Alfred, at Barbados’ Grantley Adams International Airport Tuesday has reached the attention of St Vincent Prime Minister, Ralph Gonsalves. The Prime Minister has now warned
immigration officials not to take the law unto themselves.
Kaieteur News, on Wednesday, first reported the story of Barbados immigration officials forcing the pregnant young Guyanese to sit in one place for some 12 hours while awaiting a return flight to Guyana, after she was denied entry into the island last Tuesday.
This report has since been taken up in Barbados media.
“Too many officers within immigration departments behave as though they’re laws on to themselves,” the Barbados Nation newspaper quoted Gonsalves as saying in its Saturday edition, as he commented on the case of Alfred along with two Jamaicans who recently suffered similar treatment.
“Even when you’re refusing them admission, they have to be treated properly and humanely. It’s simple and straightforward.”
The Vincentian leader and elder Caribbean statesman continued, “There are also international obligations which all of us have to treat people in a humane way as mandated by international law.”
“You can’t just take them and put them inside a room and tell them straight and plain that they’re not coming in, or you tell them to sleep on some mattress that is nasty. These things are entirely unacceptable.”
Gonsalves’s reference to international obligations echoed those of the Jamaica High Commissioner to Trinidad, David Prendergast, who also holds responsibility for his country’s nationals in Barbados.
Prendergast had on Tuesday flown into Barbados to meet with Jamaicans residents there to tell them of their rights when detained by immigration officers.
Among those whose rights were said to have been violated at the Grantley Adams International Airport was a Jamaican mother, Sonya King, and her 14-month-old baby, who had arrived on August 27, last, and was initially denied entry, kept at the airport overnight, and made to sleep on a ‘dirty’ mattress.
King said that in the cold room she was given a blanket.
“The blanket was full of hair like other people were using it before. I use it to cover the baby because the place was really cold.”
The other recent highly publicised case involved Jamaican, Marsha-Lee Cooke, whose story made it to the Barbados news media on September 04, after charges against her for assaulting police officers at the airport were dismissed.
Cooke, who arrived in Barbados on June 28 for a vacation, claimed that she was strip-searched after being accused of bringing drugs into Barbados, then carted off to jail to await trial on charges of assault.
She spent a total of 16 days in jail, won a dismissal of charges on September 01, and left the island two days later.
Emphasizing the importance of being allowed to call someone when in distress with Barbados’ immigration, Prendergast said, “Sometimes we hear about issues afterwards, like Ms Cooke, we heard about her situation after she had gone to Dodd’s (the Barbados prison)”.
He said, “A lot of people don’t know their rights. It’s a challenge we’ve had. Under the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, you are entitled to a call. Some immigration officers don’t seem to realise that, but it’s there, and all of our countries have signed onto the Vienna Convention”.
The Jamaican diplomat said that so concerned was his country about the treatment of nationals at the Barbados airport, that an honourary consul had been recently appointed to deal with issues in that east Caribbean island.
But St Vincent and the Grenadines Prime Minister, Noel Gonsalves cautioned in the Barbados Nation newspaper yesterday that the problem with immigration officers disregarding the law does not exist in Barbados alone.
“It’s not a commentary on the immigration in Barbados. I’m making the point about my country too, about immigration there. Sometimes some of our officials do not follow the law which they are sworn to uphold and follow, and don’t treat people with the basic decency they should be treated with”.
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