Unwanted, Unnoticed: an audit of 160 asylum and immigration-related deaths in Europe
of suicide, claiming Abagui was beaten by
guards, who have a reputation for brutality.103
• Mike, Sonsha and Sony, 25/03/2011
Three migrants from Ghana and elsewhere
in sub-Saharan Africa died in a fire in their
shack in the Spanish north African enclave
of Melilla. The shack, near the Migrants’
Temporary Centre, was one of many occupied
by migrants waiting in limbo for three years
or more for regularisation, to enable them to
move to mainland Spain. It is believed that
the fire was caused by a fallen candle.104
• Samba Martine (34), 19/12/2011
A Congolese asylum seeker detained in
the Aluche centre, Martine was taken to a
hospital in Madrid where she died of AIDSrelated meningitis. In the weeks before her
death, Martine had been to the centre’s
health clinic ten times complaining of persistent headaches, flu, chest pains, coughing
and other symptoms associated with the
HIV virus. She had been provided with a
interpreter only once, despite speaking no
Spanish, and had not been tested for HIV.
Martine’s mother brought a case of medical
negligence, but the court dismissed the
claim, ruling that doctors were not obliged
to carry out HIV tests. On appeal, evidence
emerged that Martine had tested positive for
the virus in a temporary detention centre
in Melilla two months before her transfer to
Madrid, but the test results had not been
sent on to the Aluche detention centre.105
• Idrissa Diallo (21), 06/01/2012
An undocumented migrant from GuineaConakry, Diallo died in the Zona Franca
detention centre in Barcelona after complaining of chest pains. Fellow detainees
claim that guards within the centre delayed
in seeking medical help, and say there
is no twenty-four hour medical facility at
the centre, only twice weekly visits by a
doctor.106
• Aramis Manukyan (32), 03/12/2013
An Armenian asylum seeker, Manukyan
was found dead in his cell in the Zona
Franca detention centre, Barcelona, where
he had been in solitary confinement for
twelve days. Guards claimed that Manukyan
hanged himself by his shoelaces, but fellow
detainees say that he was taken out of
his cell and beaten before being locked
up again, and claim to have heard groans
and cries for help from his cell. A legal
adviser also queried the guards’ account.
When his fellow detainees began a hunger
strike in protest, two detainees who had
been in neighbouring cells were deported.
A campaign was launched, supported by
several Spanish NGOs, to stop other potential witnesses being deported pending a
proper investigation.107
• Alpha Pam (28), 24/04/2013
A Senegalese undocumented migrant, Pam
was found dead of untreated tuberculosis at
his house in Majorca, in a pool of his own
blood. Pam, who had been seeking medical
treatment for six months, had been refused
on at least seven occasions because of his
undocumented status. After it was clear that
he was very ill, he was finally seen for five
minutes for a check-up after signing a guarantee of payment slip. Pam’s was the first
death to be imputed to a new law which
resulted in the withdrawal of the health cards
of nearly 900,000 undocumented migrants on
1 September 2012, barring them from nonemergency health care. Médicos del Mundo
subsequently launched a campaign, ‘Right
to care’, mobilising health care professionals, doctors and ordinary citizens to defend
the principle of universal health care.108
Alpha Pam, a Senegalese undocumented migrant, died
of untreated tuberculosis in Majorca.
IRR | European Research Progamme Briefing No. 10
22
اختر الفقرة المستهدفة3
الاتصال بفقرة
Connect to an entity
Disable highlights
أضف إلى جدول المحتويات