Shocking: 19-year-old asylum seeker starved and illegally detained in a transit zone in Hungary
A young Iraqi man separated from his family was denied food for 8 days in a transit zone. The asylum seeker was released after 10 months and is now suing the Hungarian state as a client of the Hungarian Helsinki Committee in Strasbourg.
According to the Hungarian Helsinki Committee, the young man was separated from his parents and siblings because he was older than 18 years old. He had fled Iraq with his family, and his request for asylum had been rejected twice, for which he was placed in detention, of which 306 days he was held in the Tompa transit zone.
However, the Immigration and Asylum Office (BMH) no longer gives food to adults at the immigration detention centre, which is why H.L. was deprived of food for 8 days. Until then, his younger brothers and sisters gave the young person food from theirs. He was only given food by his captors after the Hungarian State was ordered to do so by the Strasbourg Court, through the Hungarian Helsinki Committee.
The young man has taken his case to the European Court of Human Rights with the help of the Hungarian Helsinki Committee. H.L. was detained in particularly harsh conditions. He was housed in a container and was not allowed to leave his detention centre for any purpose unless accompanied by armed police or security guards, and neither UNHCR nor charity workers were allowed to visit. His captors did everything possible to make him give up and “leave voluntarily” for Serbia.
However, following the European Court of Justice ruling, the government was forced to close the transit zones on 21 May 2020. H. L. was then released and has been living in Austria since then.
The Strasbourg Court ruled last week that the Hungarian state had violated the law, as no one may be subjected to inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, in particular starvation. The Strasbourg judges therefore ordered the Hungarian state to pay a total of EUR 3,000 in just satisfaction.
Róbert Miskolczi, the lawyer of the Hungarian Helsinki Committee, who represented the asylum seeker in the Strasbourg case, said, “our client has received compensation after five years. They (transit zones) have been abolished since then, but asylum seekers are paying a high price: those who do not come from Ukraine are no longer allowed to enter the country. We are working to put an end to the forced returns that often occur.”
Several recent injustices against asylum seekers
This was not the first case recently of an asylum seeker winning a case against the Hungarian state. The Hungarian Helsinki Committee reports that an anxious Arab woman was detained in a container for patients with suspected infections, who also recently won against the Hungarian state.
The European Court of Human Rights has ordered the Hungarian state to pay EUR 3,500 in reparations after a woman from an excluded Arab minority filed a lawsuit over the trauma she suffered in a transit zone. The 27-year-old woman was kept under 24-hour observation because of her anxiety, in a container where patients with suspected infections are usually confined. She was not allowed to turn off the lights at night, claiming suicide risk, and she was not allowed to close the door in winter. She was detained in solitary confinement for 14 days in total, and since her release, she has been living in Germany, studying engineering.
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